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%ty Htocrsioe literature &mt& 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 
ADDISON 

BY 

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 



EDITED BY 

WILLIAM P. TRENT 







~\o^ot 



jfcM 



HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

Boston : 4 Park Street ; New York : 11 East Seventeenth Street 
Chicago : 15S Adams Street 

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Copyright, 1896, 
Bt HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

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The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., IT. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton and Company. 



INTRODUCTION. 

There can be little doubt that Lord Macaulay is the 
most popular writer of English prose that this century has 
produced. Thousands of copies of his History of England 
are still sold every year, and travellers tell us that if an 
Australian settler possesses three books only, the first two 
will be the Bible and Shakespeare, and the third, Macau- 
lay's Essays. And yet his authority as a critic and histo- 

an has been shaken, and his capacity as a poet — for his 
Lays of ancient Rome is a very popular book — seriously 
questioned. Nor is his popularity confined to any one circle 
of readers. Cultivated men and women in their conversa- 
tion and writings assume a knowledge of his works as a 
matter of course, but the intelligent laboring man, who is 
striving for an education, is equally, perhaps more, familiar 
with them. It is plain that a writer who makes such a 
wide and lasting appeal deserves careful study, and that 
a brief survey of his life cannot be without interest. 

Thomas Babington Macaulay was born October 25, 1800, 
at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire. His father Zachary 
was a Scotchman of probity and talents, who was a dis- 
tinguished promoter of abolition. Macaulay, therefore, 
came honestly by the middle-class virtues and defects that 
are so salient in his character. He was a precocious, nay 
rather a wonderful child, but does not appear to have been 
spoiled. His memory was prodigious and his reading enor- 
mous, while his faculty for turning out hundreds of re- 
spectable verses was simply phenomenal. After a happy 
period of schooling he entered Cambridge, where he won 
prizes for verse, and made a reputation for himself as a 
scholar and speaker, but failed of the highest honors on 



iv MA CAUL AY. 

account of his inaptitude for mathematics. He graduated 
at twenty-two, was elected a Fellow of Trinity two years 
later, and the next year startled the world hy his hrilliant 
essay on Milton in the Edinburgh Review. From this time 
his career was one of almost unbroken success. He was 
called to the bar in 1826, but gave more time to his writing 
and to his political aspirations than to his profession. In 
1830 he was elected to the House of Commons through the 
patronage of Lord Lansdowne, and began his career as a 
staunch Whig at one of the most important crises in Eng- 
lish history, — that of the first Reform Bill. 

It is quite plain that if Macaulay had taken seriously to 
politics at this juncture he would have made a name for 
himself among English statesmen, or at least among Eng- 
lish orators. The speeches he delivered were enthusias- 
tically received, he stood high with the ministers of a party 
just coming into power, he had the courage of his convic- 
tions, he had the wide erudition that has been a tradition 
with English statesmen, and he had the practical ability to 
conduct a political canvass (for the new borough of Leeds) ; 
but he liked the adulation of society a little too well, and his 
income was not sufficient to let him bide his time. Dinners 
at Holland House and breakfasts with Rogers were delight- 
ful, no doubt, as delightful as the letters in which he de- 
scribed them to his favorite sister Hannah ; and so too was 
the praise he got for his articles in the Edinburgh ; but this 
devotion to society and literature could hardly have been 
kept up along with an entirely serious and absorbing pur- 
suit of political honors. He was probably well advised, 
therefore, when in 1834 he accepted the presidency of a new 
law commission for India and a membership of the Supreme 
Council of Calcutta. It meant banishment, but it meant 
also a princely income of which half could be saved. So 
he set out, taking his sister Hannah with him, for he was a 
bachelor, discharged his duties admirably, and returned to 
England in 1838. 



INTRODUCTION. V 

On his return he reentered Parliament and served with 
distinction but not with conspicuous success. His genius 
had been diverted and his desires were more than ever 
divided. He obtained a seat in Lord John Russell's cabinet 
and supported the Whigs on all great questions, but he was 
better known as the author of the Lays of Ancient Rome 
(1842) and the Essays. He lost his seat for Edinburgh in 
1817, having been too outspoken and liberal in his views, 
yet this meant little to one who was a student by nature 
and who was about to bring out the first two volumes of the 
most popular history ever written (1849). The remaining 
decade of his life was practically the only period in which his 
energies were undivided. He was indeed reelected to Par- 
liament from Edinburgh without his solicitation, and he was 
raised to the peerage in 1857, being the first man to receive 
such an honor mainly for literary work ; but he did little be- 
sides labor on his History and make notable contributions 
to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Other honors of various 
sorts were showered on him and his fame reached the pro- 
portions of Byron's, but his health began to fail and he did 
not live long enough to experience any reaction. He died of 
heart trouble on December 28, 1859, in the fulness of his 
intellectual powers, and leaving his great history incomplete. 

The chief reasons for Macaulay's tremendous popularity 
are not far to seek. He possessed a style which whether 
metallic, as has been claimed, or not, is at all times clear 
and strenuous. He simply commanded attention by his 
positive assurance of statement, and, when once he had ob- 
tained it, took care not to lose it through any obscurity. 
Rather than indulge in qualifications that might embarrass 
the reader, he chose, it may be unconsciously, to state half 
truths as whole truths, and to play the advocate while posing 
as the critic. The world has always loved the man who 
knows his own mind, and Macaulay knew his and pro- 
claimed the fact loudly. Then again the world has always 
loved the strong man who is not too far aloof from it to 



Vl MA CAUL AY. 

hold many of its prejudices and opinions. This was just 
the case with Macaulay, who was little more than a middle- 
class Englishman with vastly magnified powers. Subtlety 
of intellect and delicacy of taste were as far from him as 
they have always been from a majority of his countrymen, 
but dogmatic assurance and optimistic confidence in what- 
ever was English were his in full measure. The very quali- 
ties that made Tennyson for a long time eclipse Browning 
made Macaulay eclipse Carlyle, and in both cases a nat- 
ural reaction set in. Critics called attention to the artifi- 
cial balance of Macaulay 's sentences, and to the brazen ring 
of his verses ; they pointed out his blindness to much that 
is highest and purest in literature ; they convicted him of 
partisanship and made short work of his assumptions of 
omniscience. In all this they had considerable truth on 
their side, but as was natural they went to extremes, and 
the pendulum of opinion is now swinging in Macaulay's 
direction again. Mr. Matthew Arnold was right when he 
insisted on Macaulay's middle-class limitations, but he went 
too far when he practically denied that Macaulay had any 
claim to the title of poet. Schoolboys and older readers 
have not been entirely deluded when they have been car- 
ried away by the swing of Ivry and of Jloratius. The 
essay on Milton has done good to thousands of readers, 
though its critical value is slight in the extreme. The third 
chapter of the History, describing the England of 1685, 
remains one of the most brilliant pieces of historical narra- 
tion ever penned, no matter how partisan Macaulay may 
have been in the remainder of the work. However much 
his assumptions of omniscience may vex us, we must per- 
force admit that no modern specialist has ever known his 
peculiar subject better than Macaulay knew his chosen 
period of history, the reigns of James II. and William III. 
Theorize as much as we will about the pellucid beauties of 
an unelaborated style, we must confess that if the object of 
writing be to reach and influence men, Macaulay's balanced, 



INTRODUCTION. vii 

antithetical style is one of the most perfect instruments of 
expression ever made use of by speaker or writer. We 
may complain that Macaulay often leaves his subject and 
wanders off into space, but we have to confess with Mr. 
Saintsbnry that he is one of the greatest stimulators of 
other minds that ever lived. In short we must conclude 
that although the brilliant historian and essayist has no 
such claim to our veneration as a great poet like Words- 
worth, or a great novelist like Scott, or a great prophet like 
Carlyle, nevertheless his place is with the honored names of 
literature, and his fame is no proper subject for carping 
and ungenerous criticism. 

With regard now to his individual works the highest 
praise must of course be given to his History. In spite of 
its incompleteness and its partisan character it is plainly one 
of the most notable of the world's historical compositions. 
It yields to the great work of Gibbon, but it would be hard 
to name any other history in English that is its superior in 
what is after all the essential point, the art of narration. 
Macaulay claimed that his favorite Addison might have 
written a great novel, but the claim might better be made 
for Macaulay himself, since he was a born story teller. 
Unkind critics have intimated that he drew upon his imagi- 
nation for his characters, and the public has always con- 
fessed that the History is as interesting as a novel. We 
shall not, however, go so far as to maintain that the His- 
tory is a novel or that Lord Macaulay was a great novelist 
spoiled ; but we are at liberty to contend that the great 
secret of the historian's success lay in his comprehension of 
the fact that to make the past really live it must be treated 
in much the same way in which a novelist would treat the 
materials gathered for his story. 

Perhaps enough has been said about our author's scanty 
poetry, which appeals chiefly through its swing and vigor, 
but the Essays will naturally demand somewhat fuller 
treatment. Their main value lies probably in the stimula- 
tion they give to the intellectual powers of any reader who 



vin MACAULAY. 

has a spark of literary appreciation or the slightest desire 18 ' 
to learn. Macaulay's erudition is so great and he wears it 
so lightly that one is instinctively led to wish for a similar 
mental equipment, and to fancy that it cannot be very diffi- 
cult of attainment. Whatever Macaulay likes is described 
in such alluring terms that a reader feels that it would 
really be too bad for him not to know more about it. The 
truth of this statement is amusingly illustrated by an anec- 
dote, given in the Life and Letters, of a gentleman who 
after reading the review of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Pi'ogress 
sent a servant after the book. Macaulay was sitting near 
him in the library of the Athenaeum Club and enjoyed the 
incident. But, besides their alluring style and their power 
of mental stimulation, the Essays have the advantage of 
treating in the main great subjects that people wish to know 
about, and treating them in such a way as to impart a large 
amount of compact and very useful information. Perhaps 
this is the chief reason why men who are self-educated are 
so familiar with Macaulay. Such readers care very little 
for the nicer shadings of criticism, but they do care a great 
deal to have available information and positive opinions 
furnished them on the great men and events of the past. 
Hence Macaulay's essay on Bacon will survive the monu- 
mental answer that Mr. Spedding gave it ; hence his essays 
on Clive and Warren Hastings will for generations supply 
the public with all the Indian history it is likely to demand. 
After the Milton Macaulay wrote about forty essays, all 
of which appeared in the Edinburgh except the five con- 
tributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. They fall into 
two main classes, literary and historical, with a few of 
miscellaneous character, such as that on Sadler's Law of 
Popidation. It is a striking proof of Macaulay's genius 
that they are nearly all as well worth reading to-day as 
they were when they appeared between the yellow and blue 
covers. As a rule a review is unreadable a few years after 
its appearance, as is proved by the dust that settles upon 
the volumes of such contemporaries of Macaulay's as Mack- 



INTRODUCTION. ix 

intosh and Talfourd. Their reviews were duly collected 
into volumes and they were included with Macaulay among 
the " British Essayists," but they are dead while Macaulay 
lives. The quarterlies are still published, and their pon- 
derous reviews are read by leisurely people, and immedi- 
ately forgotten, for there is no form of literature that has 
less vitality. Yet Macaulay's reviews are still read by thou- 
sands and keep alive the names of books and men that 
would else have long since perished. It is a remarkable 
literary phenomenon. While Macaulay did not originate 
the discursive literary review, he first gave it life and popu- 
larity, and may be compared to a trunk that puts forth 
many branches. But the branches are all dead or dying, 
while the trunk seems to be endowed with perpetual life 
and vigor. Explain it as we may, the fact remains that 
the essays on Clive and Pitt and Warren Hastings, on Mil- 
ton and Addison and Johnson, on Barere and Mr. Robert 
Montgomery's Poems, although belonging by nature to the 
most ephemeral category of literature, are as fully entitled 
to be called classics as any compositions written in the Eng- 
lish language during the present century. 

Four of the best of these classical essays form the basis 
of this collection, and a careful study of them with the aid 
of the introductions and notes will initiate the student into 
much of the secret of Macaulay's power and charm. He 
should not, however, rest content with them, but should 
read at least most of the Essays and the poems, and should 
then go on to complete the five volumes of the History. 
Even then he will not have all of Macaulay, for the two 
delightful volumes of the Life and Letters, edited by Mr. 
Trevelyan, will remain to be enjoyed. Mr. Cotter Mori- 
son's excellent biography in the English Men of Letters 
will also be found worth perusing, and if a good analysis of 
the style of the great essayist be wanted, it can be had in a 
chapter of Professor Minto's well known Manual of Eng- 
lish Prose Literature. 



Q d sjocLc- 



1 / 



<\(i /. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

This elaborate essay appeared in the Edinburgh Review for 
July, 1843. It was nominally a review of Miss Aikin's Life of 
Joseph Addison, but was really a tribute of Macaulay's own to 
the character and attainments of a man whom he heartily ad- 
mired. Its rank among- the literary essays is high, but after all 
it reaches only a half-way position between the youthful exag- 
geration and elan of the essay on Milton, and the chastened 
strength of the essay on Johnson. Considered merely from the 
point of view of style, it is, of course, worthy of high praise ; but 
from the point of view of criticism, it is fairly subject to severe 
animadversion. Macaulay commits the common error of ima- 
gining, or seeming to imagine, that he cannot do justice to one 
man of genius without running down all who may be regarded as 
his competitors. So in our own day the lovers of Shelley seem 
to consider themselves obliged to act toward Lord Byron. But 
such partisanship is foreign to the truly catholic critic; and how- 
ever much we may admire the splendid service that Macaulay 
was always willing and able to render to the men and causes 
he admired, we must never forget that his real function was 
that of an advocate, not of a critic. In the case of Addison the 
exaggerated note in Macaulay's praise was probably due, as 
Matthew Arnold has pointed out, to his own inability to see 
where his favorite writer fell short as a moralist, a critic, and 
a man. With all his scholarship and all his travel, Macaiday 
remained at bottom a middle-class Englishman, and therefore 
the commonplace character of much of Addison's work as a 
moralist and a critic did not strike him. These same middle- 
class prejudices also blinded him to the coldness, the formal cor- 
rectness, that make Addison's character unattractive to many 
people, while at the same time they rendered him utterly inca- 
pable of appreciating the magnetic charm of the far from cold 



90 MAC AULA Y. 






and correct Steele. In short, the essay on Addison suffers 
greatly from the defects of its author's qualities, and, unlike the 
tribute to Milton, is not aggressive enough in its partisanship 
to sweep the reader away. Nevertheless, when all is said, 
Macaulay's virtues here, as elsewhere, outweigh his faults, and 
there are few essays in our language that so well repay careful 
study on the part of the reader who desires to he stimulated 
toward the attainment of a wider culture. 

With regard to Addison little need be said. That he is not a 
profound moralist, that he is a conventional rather than a subtle 
critic, has been discovered by many a reader who did not have 
Matthew Arnold to guide him; but if this reader has not also 
discovered that for playful humor and humane satire, Joseph 
Addison has not his equal in English literature, he should at 
once throw down his huge modern daily and turn to those short 
periodical essays that once formed a necessary accompaniment 
of every fashionable London breakfast. Whether Addison might 
have made himself the greatest of English novelists, as Macaulay 
avers, is more than doubtful ; but that he did make himself one 
of the most graceful and fascinating of essayists, is hardly mat- 
ter for discussion. One might as well deny the greatness of 
Meissonier as a genre painter as to deny that of Addison as a 
writer of sympathetic character sketches, of playful satires, of 
gracefully imaginative allegories. But Meissonier is not a Rem- 
brandt, and Addison is not a Balzac or a Fielding. Yet to be 
the Addison who described Sir Roger's death and conceived The 
Vision of Mirza is glory enough for one man. If now the stu- 
dent or general reader wish to become better acquainted with 
this true though limited genius, he need have no difficulty in 
obtaining proper helps. For the entire works, Greene's edition 
is probably to be preferred ; for The Spectator alone, Professor 
Morley's. The Sir Roger de Coverlet) Papers may be had sepa- 
rately in the Riverside Literature Series ; and The Tatler, The Guar- 
dian, and the other periodicals are all included in Chalmers's 
British Essayists. The most recent biography is Mr. Courthope's 
in the English Men of Letters, but the lives of Steele by Aitken 
and Austin Dobson must also be consulted. For criticism one will 
naturally go to the histories of English literature and to Thack- 
eray's English Humorists. Hare's Walks in Rome and the same 
author's Walks in London will clear up any topographical doubts. 
The names of German writers which appear may be further 
explained by reference to Wells's Modern German Literature. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 



Some reviewers are of opinion that a lady who 
dares to publish a book renounces by that act the 
franchises appertaining to her sex, and can claim no 
exemption from the utmost rigor of critical proce- 
dure. From that opinion we dissent. We admit, 
indeed, that, in a country which boasts of many fe- 
male writers eminently qualified by their talents and 
acquirements to influence the public mind, it would 
be of most pernicious consequence that inaccurate 
history or unsound philosophy should be suffered to 
pass uncensured, merely because the offender chanced 
to be a lady. But we conceive that, on such occa- 
sions, a critic would do well to imitate the courteous 
knight who found himself compelled by duty to keep 
the lists against Bradamante. He, we are told, de- 
fended successfully the cause of which he was the 
champion, but, before the fight began, exchanged 
Balisarda for a less deadly sword, of which he care- 
fully blunted the point and edge. 1 

Nor are the immunities of sex the only immunities 
which Miss Aikin 2 may rightfully plead. Several of 

1 See Ariosto's (1474-1533) Orlando Furioso, xlv. 68. The 
courteous knight was Ruggiero. With Balisarda compare the 
names of other famous swords, — e. g., Arthur's Excalibur, 
Hrunting {Beowulf), etc. 

2 Miss Lucy Aikin (1781-1864) was a daughter of Dr. John 
Aikin, a well-known critic and compiler, and a sister of the bet- 



92 MAC A UL AY. 

her works, and especially the very pleasing "Memoirs 
of the Court of King James I.," have fully entitled 
her to the privileges enjoyed by good writers. One 
of those privileges we hold to be this : that such writ- 
ers, when, either from the unlucky choice of a subject 
or from the indolence too often produced by success, 
they happen to fail, shall not be subjected to the 
severe discipline which it is sometimes necessary to 
inflict upon dunces and impostors, 1 but shall merely 
be reminded by a gentle touch, like that with which 
the Laputan flapper 2 roused his dreaming lord, that 
it is high time to wake. 

Our readers will probably infer from what we have 
said that Miss Aikin's book has disappointed us. 
The truth is, that she is not well acquainted with her 
subject. No person who is not familiar with the 
political and literary history of England during the 
reigns of William III., of Anne, and of George I., 
can possibly write a good life of Addison. Now, we 
mean no reproach to Miss Aikin, and many will think 
that we pay her a compliment when we say that her 
studies have taken a different direction. She is better 
acquainted with Shakespeare and Raleigh than with 
Congreve and Prior, and is far more at home among 
the ruffs and peaked beards of Theobald's 8 than 
among the Steenkirks 4 and flowing periwigs which 

ter known Mrs. Barbauld. She wrote memoirs of the courts of 
Elizabeth and Charles I., besides the work mentioned in the text. 

1 Macanlay is probably alluding to his celebrated scathing 
review of Mr. Robert Montgomery's poems, which appeared in 
the Edinburgh for April, 1830. 

2 See Gulliver's Travels, Lapnta, chap. ii. 

8 The country-seat of Elizabeth's famous minister, William 
Cecil, Lord Burleigh (1520-1598.) 

4 Loose cravats of fine lace, so called because they came into 
fashion after the defeat of William III. at Steenkirk, in Holland. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 93 

surrounded Queen Anne's tea-table at Hampton. 1 
She seems to have written about the Elizabethan age, 
because she had read much about it; she seems, on 
the other hand, to have read a little about the age of 
Addison, because she had determined to write about 
it. The consequence is, that she has had to describe 
men and things without having either a correct or a 
vivid idea of them, and that she has often fallen into 
errors of a very serious kind. The reputation which 
Miss Aikin has justly earned stands so high, and the 
charm of Addison's letters is so great, that a second 
edition of this work may probably be required. If 
so, we hope that every paragraph will be revised, and 
that every date and fact about which there can be the 
smallest doubt will be carefully verified. 

To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment 
as much like affection as any sentiment can be which 
is inspired by one who has been sleeping a hundred 
and twenty years in Westminster Abbey. We trust, 
however, that this feeling will not betray us into that 
abject idolatry which we have often had occasion to 
reprehend in others, 2 and which seldom fails to make 
both the idolater and the idol ridiculous. A man of 
genius and virtue is but a man. All his powers can- 
not be equally developed, nor can we expect from him 
perfect self-knowledge. We need not, therefore, hes- 
itate to admit that Addison has left us some com- 
positions which do not rise above mediocrity, some 
heroic poems hardly equal to Parnell's, 3 some criticism 

1 Hampton Court, built by Wolsey, a favorite residence of 
English sovereigns. 

2 See for example the review of Dr. Nares's Memoirs of Bur- 
leigh in the Edinburgh for April, 1832. 

8 Thomas Parnell (1679-1717), a poet chiefly remembered for 
his Hermit. " Heroic poems " must mean poems in the heroic 



94 MACAU LAY. 

as superficial as Dr. Blair's, 1 and a tragedy not very 
much better than Dr. Johnson's. 2 It is pi'aise enough 
to say of a writer that, in a high department of liter- 
ature in which many eminent writers have distin- 
guished themselves, he has had no equal; and this 
may with strict justice be said of Addison. 

As a man he may not have deserved the adoration 
which he received from those who, bewitched by his 
fascinating society, and indebted for all the comforts 
of life to his generous and delicate friendship, wor- 
shiped him nightly in his favorite temple at Button's. 3 
But, after full inquiry and impartial reflection, we 
have long been convinced that he deserved as much 
love and esteem as can be justly claimed by any of 
our infirm and erring race. Some blemishes may 
undoubtedly be detected in his character; but the 
more carefully it is examined, the more will it appear, 
to use the phrase of the old anatomists, sound in the 
noble parts, free from all taint of perfidy, of coward- 
ice, of cruelty, of ingratitude, of envy. Men may 
easily be named in whom some particular good dis- 
position has been more conspicuous than in Addi- 
son. But the just harmony of qualities, the exact 
temper between the stern and the humane virtues, 
the habitual observance of every law, not only of 
moral rectitude, but of moral grace and dignity, dis- 
tinguish him from all men who have been tried by 

couplet. (See page 107, note 2.) The Campaign is heroic in 
matter as well, but Parnell wrote nothing to which it could well 
be compared in this respect. 

1 Dr. Hugh Blair (1718-1800), a Scotch divine whose treatise 
on Rhetoric was once a noted book and is still worth examination. 

2 Irene. See the essay on Johnson, page 27. 

3 For this noted coffee-house, see the essay on Johnson, page 
67, note 2; and Greene's note to Spectator No. 1. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 95 

equally strong temptations, and about whose conduct 
we possess equally full information. 

His father was the Rev. Lancelot Addison, who, 
though eclipsed by his more celebrated son, made 
some figure in the world, and occupies with credit 
two folio pages in the "Biographia Britannica." 1 
Lancelot was sent up, as a poor scholar, from West- 
moreland to Queen's College, Oxford, in the time of 
the Commonwealth ; made some progress in learning ; 
became, like most of his fellow - students, a violent 
Royalist ; lampooned the heads of the university, 
and was forced to ask pardon on his bended knees. 
When he had left college, he earned a humble sub- 
sistence by reading the liturgy of the fallen church 
to the families of those sturdy squires whose manor 
houses were scattered over the Wild of Sussex. 2 After 
the Restoration, his loyalty was rewarded with the 
post of chaplain to the garrison of Dunkirk. 3 When 
Dunkirk was sold to France, he lost his employment. 
But Tangier had been ceded by Portugal to England 
as a part of the marriage portion of the Infanta 4 
Catharine; and to Tangier Lancelot Addison was 
sent. A more miserable situation can hardly be con- 
ceived. It was difficult to say whether the unfor- 
tunate settlers were more tormented by the heats or 

1 Appeared in seven folio volumes between 1747 and 1766, 
the first important undertaking of its kind in Great Britain. 

- Wild, i. e., Weald. See Encyclopcedia Britannica s. v. " Sus- 
sex " for an account of the district. 

3 Dunkirk, a seaport of France, ceded to Cromwell in 1658, 
and ceded back by Charles II. in 1667, to the great disgust of 
his people. 

4 Infanta is the title applied to Spanish or Portuguese prin- 
cesses of the blood royal. Here Catharine of Braganza, who 
married Charles II. in 1662. 



96 MACAULAY. 

by the rains ; by the soldiers within the wall, or by 
the Moors without it. One advantage the chaplain 
had. He enjoyed an excellent opportunity of study- 
ing the history and manners of Jews and Mohamme- 
dans; and of this opportunity he appears to have 
made excellent use. On his return to England, after 
some years of banishment, he published an interesting 
volume on the Polity and Religion of Barbary, and 
another on the Hebrew Customs and the State of 
Rabbinical Learning. He rose to eminence in his 
profession, and became one of the royal chaplains, 
a doctor of divinity, Archdeacon of Salisbury, and 
Dean of Lichfield. It is said that he would have 
been made a bishop after the Revolution, if he had 
not given offense to the government by strenuously 
opposing, in the Convocation of 1689, the liberal 
policy of William and Tillotson. 1 

In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison's return 
from Tangier, his son Joseph was born. 2 Of Joseph's 
childhood we know little. He learned his rudiments 
at schools in his father's neighborhood, and was then 
sent to the Charter House. 3 The anecdotes which 
are popularly related about his boyish tricks do not 
harmonize very well with what we know of his riper 
years. There remains a tradition that he was the 
ringleader in a barring-out; and another tradition 
that he ran away from school, and hid himself in a 

1 John Tillotson (1630-1694), made Archbishop of Canterbury 
by William III., was noted for his moderation and the eloquence 
of his sermons, which were long read and admired. 

2 May 1st, at Milston in Wilts. 

3 Charter House — a famous charity consisting of a hospital, 
chapel, and school, founded in 1611. Among its noted schol- 
ars, besides Addison and Steele, have been Blackstone, Grote, 
Thackeray, Thirl wall, and John Wesley. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 97 

wood, where he fed on berries and slept in a hollow 
tree, till, after a long search, he was discovered and 
brought home. If these stories be true, it would be 
curious to know by what moral discipline so mutinous 
and enterprising a lad was transformed into the gen- 
tlest and most modest of men. 

We have abundant proof that, whatever Joseph's 
pranks may have been, he pursued his studies vigor- 
ously and successfully. At fifteen he was not only 
fit for the university, but carried thither a classical 
taste and a stock of learning which would have done 
honor to a master of arts. He was entered at Queen's 
College, Oxford ; but he had not been many months 
there when some of his Latin verses fell by accident 
into the hands of Dr. Lancaster, 1 Dean of Magdalen 
College. The young scholar's diction and versifica- 
tion were already such as veteran professors might 
envy. Dr. Lancaster was desirous to serve a boy of 
such promise ; nor was an opportunity long wanting. 
The Revolution had just taken place, and nowhere 
had it been hailed with more delight than at Mag- 
dalen College. That great and opulent corporation 
had been treated by James, and by his chancellor, 2 
with an insolence and injustice which, even in such 
a prince and in such a minister, may justly excite 
amazement, and which had done more than even the 
prosecution of the bishops to alienate the Church of 

1 Dr. William Lancaster (1650-1711) seems to have been af- 
terwards Provost of Queen's College, but not Dean of Magdalen. 

2 The infamous Judge Jeffreys (1G48-1689), noted for his 
cruelty and brutality. For the treatment of Magdalen College 
(founded in 1466, pronounced Maudlin), and the famous trial and 
acquittal of the seven Bishops who in 1687 refused to read in 
their churches James's declaration of indulgence, see Macaulay'p 
History, chap. viii. 



98 MACAULAY. 

England from the throne. A president : duly elected 
had been violently expelled from his dwelling; a Pa- 
pist 2 had been set over the society by a royal man- 
date; the fellows who, in conformity with their oaths, 
had refused to submit to this usurper, had been driven 
forth from their quiet cloisters and gardens to die of 
want, or to live on charity. But the day of redress 
and retribution speedily came. The intruders were 
ejected ; the venerable house was again inhabited by 
its old inmates ; learning nourished under the rule of 
the wise and virtuous Hough ; and with learning was 
united a mild and liberal spirit too often wanting in 
the princely colleges of Oxford. In consequence of 
the troubles through which the society had passed, 
there had been no valid election of new members 
during the year 1688. In 1689, therefore, there was 
twice the ordinary number of vacancies ; and thus Dr. 
Lancaster found it easy to procure for his young 
friend admittance to the advantages of a foundation 
then generally esteemed the wealthiest in Europe. 

At Magdalen, Addison resided during ten years. 
He was at first one of those scholars who are called 
"Demies," 3 but was subsequently elected a fellow. 
His college is still proud of his name; his portrait 
still hangs in the hall; and strangers are still told 
that his favorite walk was under the elms which 
fringe the meadow on the banks of the Cherwell. It 
is said, and is highly probable, that he was distin- 

1 John Hough (1G51-1743), Bishop successively of Oxford, 
Lichfield, and Worcester. 

2 James first tried to force a wretched person named Anthony 
Farmer on the college. Afterwards he recommended Parker, 
Bishop of Oxford, who was not an avowed Papist. 

8 Demies — the name seems to be peculiar to the holders of 
certain scholarships at Magdalen — half-fellows. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 99 

guished among his fellow-students by the delicacy of 
his feelings, by the shyness of his manners, and by 
the assiduity with which he often prolonged his studies 
far into the night. It is certain that his reputation 
f Di* ability and learning stood high. Many years 
later the ancient doctors of Magdalen continued to 
talk in their common room of his boyish compositions, 
and expressed their sorrow that no copy of exercises 
so remarkable had been preserved. 

It is proper, however, to remark that Miss Aikin 
has committed the error, very pardonable in a lady, 
of overrating Addison's classical attainments. In 
one department of learning, indeed, his proficiency 
was such as it is hardly possible to overrate. His 
knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and 
Catullus down to Claudian and Prudentius, 1 was sin- 
gularly exact and profound. He understood them 
thoroughly, entered into their spirit, and had the 
finest and most discriminating perception of all their 
peculiarities of style and melody ; nay, he copied their 
manner with admirable skill, and surpassed, we think, 
all their British imitators who had preceded him, 
Buchanan 2 and Milton alone excepted. This is high 
praise; and beyond this we cannot with justice go. 

1 Lucretius (95-55 B. c.) and Catullus (86-46 B. c.) repre- 
sent the betcer and earlier Latin poets ; Claudian and Pruden- 
tius (fourth century A. D.), the latest and less worthy. 

2 George Buchanan (1506-1582), one of the greatest of the 
early writers of Scotland, was tutor to Mary, Queen of Scots 
(whose life he wrote in Latin), and to her son James VI., 
afterwards the pedant king of England. He was prominent in 
the civil and ecclesiastical affairs of his troubled period, and left 
behind a large body of writings, of which his Latin poems and 
his Paraphrase of the Psalms are best remembered. Miltou 
thought very highly of him. 



100 MACAULAY. 

It is clear that Addison's serious attention during his 
residence at the university was almost entirely con- 
centrated on Latin poetry, and that, if he did not 
wholly neglect other provinces of ancient literature, 
he vouchsafed to them only a cursory glance. He 
does not appear to have attained more than an ordi- 
nary acquaintance with the political and moral writers 
of Rome ; nor was his own Latin prose by any means 
equal to his Latin verse. His knowledge of Greek, 
though doubtless such as was in his time thought 
respectable at Oxford, was evidently less than that 
which many lads now carry away every year from 
Eton and Rugby. A minute examination of his 
works, if we had time to make such an examination, 
would fully bear out these remarks. We will briefly 
advert to a few of the facts on which our judgment is 
grounded. 

Great praise is due to the notes which Addison 
appended to his version of the second and third books 
of the "Metamorphoses." Yet those notes, while 
they show him to have been in his own domain an 
accomplished scholar, show also how confined that 
domain was. They are rich in apposite references to 
Virgil, Statius, 1 and Claudian, but they contain not 
a single illustration drawn from the Greek poets. 
Now if, in the whole compass of Latin literature, 
there be a passage which stands in need of illustration 
drawn from the Greek poets, it is the story of Pen- 
theus in the third book of the "Metamorphoses." 
Ovid was indebted for that story to Euripides and 
Theocritus, 2 both of whom he has sometimes followed 

1 P. Papinius Statius (61-96 A. D.), author of the Thebais. 

2 See Mahaffy's History of Classical Greek Literature and the 
Introduction to Lang's Theocritus. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 101 

minutely. But neither to Euripides nor to Theocri- 
tus does Addison make the faintest allusion; and 
we therefore believe that we do not wrong him by 
supposing that he had little or no knowledge of their 
works. 

His travels in Italy, again, abound with classical 
quotations happily introduced; but scarcely one of 
those quotations is in prose. He draws more illustra- 
tions from Ausonius and Manilius 1 than from Cicero. 
Even his notions of the political and military affairs 
of the Romans seem to be derived from poets and 
poetasters. Spots made memorable by events which 
have changed the destinies of the world, and which 
have been worthily recorded by great historians, bring- 
to his mind only scraps of some ancient versifier. In 
the gorge of the Apennines he naturally remembers 
the hardships which Hannibal's army endured, and 
proceeds to cite, not the authentic narrative of Poly- 
bius, not the picturesque narrative of Livy, but the 
languid hexameters of Silius Italicus. On the banks 
of the Rubicon he never thinks of Plutarch's lively 
description, or of the stern conciseness of the Com- 
mentaries, or of those Letters to Atticus which so 
forcibly express the alternations of hojje and fear in 
a sensitive mind at a great crisis. His only authority 
for the events of the civil war is Lucan. 2 

1 D. Magnus Ausonius (fourth century A. D.) and Caius Mani- 
lius (first century A. D.), minor and obscure Latin poets, the 
first named, however, being occasionally read and referred to. 

2 Of the names mentioned in this passage the student will be 
familiar with those of Hannibal, Livy, and Plutarch ; he will at 
once connect the Rubicon and the Commentaries with Csesar 
and the Letters with Cicero ; Polybius he should remember as 
the Greek historian, born just before the defeat of Hannibal at 
Zama, and hence much more of an authority than Silius Italicus, 



102 M AC AULA Y. 

All the best ancient works of art at Rome and 
Florence are Greek. Addison saw them, however, 
without recalling one single verse of Pindar, of Calli- 
machus, or of the Attic dramatists ; 1 but they brought 
to his recollection innumerable passages of Horace, 
Juvenal, Statins, and Ovid. 

The same may be said of the treatise on medals. 
In that pleasing work we find about three hundred 
passages extracted with great judgment from the 
Roman poets; but we do not recollect a single pas- 
sage taken from any Roman orator or historian, and 
we are confident that not a line is quoted from any 
Greek writer. No person who had derived all his 
information on the subject of medals from Addison 
would suspect that the Greek coins were in histori- 
cal interest equal, and in beauty of execution far 
superior, to those of Rome. 

If it were necessary to find any further proof that 
Addison's classical knowledge was confined within 
narrow limits, that proof would be furnished by his 
"Essay on the Evidences of Christianity." 2 The 
Roman poets throw little or no light on the literary 
and historical questions which he is under the neces- 
sity of examining in that essay. He is, therefore, 
left completely in the dark; and it is melancholy to 

who wrote his poem on the Punic War in the first century A. D.; 
and he should at least recall of M. Annseus Lucan's (a. d. 
38-65 ?) Pharsalia, which described the civil war between Pom- 
pey and Caesar, the often quoted verse: — 

" Victrix causa deis placuit, sed vieta Catoni." 

1 See Mahaffy for Pindar and the dramatists. Callimachus 
was an Alexandrian poet of the third century b. c, of whose 
voluminous works only some epigrams and miscellaneous pieces 
are extant. 

2 See page 209. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 103 

see how helplessly he gropes his way from blunder 
to blunder. He assigns as grounds for his religious 
belief stories as absurd as that of the Cock Lane 
ghost, 1 and forgeries as rank as Ireland's Vortigern; 2 
puts faith in the lie about the Thundering Legion; 3 
is convinced that Tiberius moved the senate to admit 
Jesus among the gods ; 4 and pronounces the letter 
of Abgarus, King of Edessa, 5 to be a record of great 
authority. Nor were these errors the effects of super- 
stition, for to superstition Addison was by no means 
prone. The truth is, that he was writing about what 
he did not understand. 

Miss Aikin has discovered a letter from which it 
appears that, while Addison resided at Oxford, he 
was one of several writers whom the booksellers en- 

1 See the essay on Johnson, page 40, note 2. 

2 William Henry Ireland (1777-1835) ranks with Lauder 
and Macpherson and Psalmanazar among literary forgers. He 
forged Shakespeare documents and pretended to have found a 
new version of Lear and an entirely new play, Vortigern and 
Rowena. Malone exposed the imposture, but enough people 
were gulled to enable Ireland to get his forgeries published and 
his Vortigern acted at Drury Lane, where it was a dismal failure. 
In 1805 he published a confession of his guilt, and for thirty 
years continued to do literary work in poverty and obscurity. 

3 This name was given to a legion of Christians serving in the 
army of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius against the Quadi. Their 
prayer for rain to quench their thirst was said to have been fol- 
lowed by a thunder shower which accomplished their desires, 
while killing numbers of the enemy by lightning. 

4 The story rests on the authority of Tertullian, the celebrated 
Christian Father of the end of the second century. 

5 Eusebius, the Church historian, relates how this king was 
ill and wrote a letter to Christ beseeching Him to come and 
heal him. Christ replied by letter saying that He would send 
one of His disciples. After the resurrection St. Thomas sent 
Thaddfeus, who performed the service. 



104 MAC A UL AY. 

gaged to make an English version of Herodotus; and 
she infers that he must have been a good Greek 
scholar. We can allow very little weight to this 
argument when we consider that his fellow-laborers 
were to have been Boyle and Blackmore. 1 Boyle 
is remembered chiefly as the nominal author of the 
worst book on Greek history and philology that ever 
was printed; and this book, bad as it is, Boyle was 
unable to produce without help. Of Blackmore's 
attainments in the ancient tongues, it may be suffi- 
cient to say, that in his prose he has confounded an 
aphorism with an apothegm, and that when, in his 
verse, he treats of classical subjects, his habit is to 
regale his readers with four false quantities 2 to a 
page. 

It is probable that the classical acquirements of 
Addison were of as much service to him as if they 
had been more extensive. The world generally gives 
its admiration, not to the man who does what nobody 
else even attempts to do, but to the man who does 
best what multitudes do well. Bentley was so immeas- 
urably superior to all the other scholars of his time, 
that few among them could discover his superiority. 

1 Charles Boyle (1G76-1731), nephew of the great philosopher, 
edited the so-called Epistles of Phalaris with the assistance of 
Atterbury (see Macaulay's essay on the latter), which led to the 
publication of Dr. Richard Bentley 's (1662-1742), famous Dis- 
sertation which proved the spuriousness of the Epistles and es- 
tablished Bentley's fame as the greatest of English classical 
scholars. Sir Richard Blackmore (1650 ?-l 729), was a better 
physician than poet, and has been for nearly two centuries the 
butt of critics. See Johnson's Life of him. 

2 Ancient poetry depended on the quantity of the syllables, so 
a mistake in this matter was a proof of Blackmore's lack of 
scholarship. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 105 

But the accomplishment in which Addison excelled 
his contemporaries was then, as it is now, highly 
valued and assiduously cultivated at all English seats 
of learning. Everybody who had been at a public 
school had written Latin verses: many had written 
such verses with tolerable success, and were quite able 
to appreciate, though by no means able to rival, the 
skill with which Addison imitated Virgil. His lines 
on the "Barometer " and the "Bowling Green " 1 were 
applauded by hundreds to whom the " Dissertation on 
the Epistles of Phalaris " was as unintelligible as the 
hieroglyphics on an obelisk. 

Purity of style, and an easy flow of numbers, are 
common to all Addison's Latin poems. Our favorite 
piece is "The Battle of the Cranes and Pygmies," for 
in that piece we discern a gleam of the fancy and 
humor which many years later enlivened thousands of 
breakfast tables. Swift boasted that he was never 
known to steal a hint, and he certainly owed as little to 
his predecessors as any modern writer. Yet we can- 
not help suspecting that he borrowed, perhaps uncon- 
sciously, one of the happiest touches in his "Voyage 
to Lilliput " from Addison's verses. Let our readers 
judge. 

"The Emperor," says Gulliver, "is taller by about 
the breadth of my nail than any of his court, which 
alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders." 

About thirty years before "Gulliver's Travels" 
appeared, Addison wrote these lines : — 

" Jamque aeies inter medias sese arduus infert 
Pygmeadum ductor, qui, majestate verendus, 

1 Sphceristerium. Addison's Latin verse is small in quan- 
tity. 



106 MAC A UL AY. 

Incessiique gravis, reliquos supereminet omnes 
Mole gigantea, mediamqne asurgit in ulnam." 1 

The Latin poems of Addison were greatly and 
justly admired, both at Oxford and Cambridge, be- 
fore his name had ever been heard by the wits who 
thronged the coffee-houses round Drury Lane Thea- 
tre. 2 In his twenty-second year he ventured to appear 
before the public as a writer of English verse. He 
addressed some complimentary lines to Dryden, 3 who, 
after many triumphs and many reverses, had at length 
reached a secure and lonely eminence among the liter- 
ary men of that age. Dryden appears to have been 
much gratified by the young scholar's praise, and an 
interchange of civilities and good offices followed. 
Addison was probably introduced by Dryden to Con- 
greve, and was certainly presented by Congreve to 
Charles Montague, 4 who was then chancellor of the 
exchequer, and leader of the Whig party in the 
House of Commons. 

At this time, Addison seemed inclined to devote 
himself to poetry. He published a translation of 
part of the fourth "Georgic," "Lines to King Wil- 
liam," and other performances of equal value; that 

1 The verses occur about the middle of the Prcelium inter 
Pygmceos et Grues Commissum, and may be roughly rendered : 
" And now into the midst of the squadrons the bold leader of 
the Pygmies forces his way, who, venerable in majesty and 
commanding in his movements, towers over all the rest with his 
gigantic stature, and rises to the height of the elbow." 

2 See the essay on Johnson, page 26, note. 

8 John Dryden (1631-1700) had seven years to live, and his 
best work (the Fables and Alexander's Feast) to do when these 
lines were written (1693). 

4 See the essay on Milton, page 11, note 2. He was afterwards 
Earl of Halifax, and must not be confused with other statesmen 
of the same name, one of whom is mentioned in this essay. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 107 

is to say, of no value at all. But in those clays the 
public was in the habit of receiving- with applause 
pieces which would now have little chance of ob- 
taining the Newdigate prize or the Seatonian prize. 1 
And the reason is obvious. The heroic couplet 2 was 
then the favorite measure. The art of arranging 
words in that measure, so that the lines may flow 
smoothly, that the accents may fall correctly, that the 
rhymes may strike the ear strongly, and that there 
may be a pause at the end of every distich, is an art 
as mechanical as that of mending a kettle or shoeing 
a horse, and may be learned by any human being who 
has sense enough to learn anything. But, like other 
mechanical arts, it was gradually improved by means 
of many experiments and many failures. It was re- 
served for Pope to discover the trick, to make him- 
self complete master of it, and to teach it to every- 
body else. From the time when his "Pastorals" ap- 
peared, heroic versification became matter of rule and 
compass; and before long all artists were on a level. 
Hundreds of dunces who never blundered on one 
happy thought or expression were able to write reams 
of couplets, which, as far as euphony was concerned, 
could not be distinguished from those of Pope him- 
self, and which very clever writers of the reign of 
Charles II. — Rochester, 3 for example, or Marvell, 4 

1 Prizes for English verse awarded at Oxford and Cambridge 
respectively. 

2 That is, the iambic pentameter, in couplets that in the hands 
of Pope and his school do not overlap. 

3 John Wilniot, Earl of Rochester (1G47-1G80), author of the 
famous epitaph on Charles II., and a poet capable of much 
better work than the mass of his poetry, which is unrivaled for 
filth and obscenity. 

4 Andrew Marvell (1620-1678) was a politician, a poet of con- 



108 MACAULAY. 

or Oldham 1 — would have contemplated with admir- 
ing despair. 

Ben Jonson was a great man, Hoole 2 a very small 
man. But Hoole, coming after Pope, had learned 
how to manufacture decasyllable verses, and poured 
them forth by thousands and tens of thousands, all 
as well turned, as smooth, and as like each other as 
the blocks which have passed through Mr. Brunei's 3 
mill in the dockyard at Portsmouth. Ben's heroic 
couplets resemble blocks rudely hewn out by an mi- 
practiced hand with a blunt hatchet. Take as a 
specimen his translation of a celebrated passage in 
the "JEneid :" — 

" This child oar parent earth, stirr'cl up with spite 
Of all the gods, brought forth, and, as some write, 
She was last sister of that giant race 
That sought to scale Jove's court, right swift of j)ace, 
And swifter far of wing, a monster vast 
And dreadful. Look, how many plumes are placed 
On her huge corpse, so many waking eyes 
Stick underneath, and, which may stranger rise 
In the report, as many tongues she wears." 4 

Compare with these jagged, misshapen distichs the 
neat fabric which Hoole's machine produces in unlim- 

siderable powers (see the selections from him in Palgrave's 
Golden Treasury), and a friend of Milton's. 

1 John Oldham (1655-1683) was a predecessor of Dryden in 
writing vigorous poetic satires. 

2 John Hoole (1727-1803), chiefly known as a translator of 
Tasso and Ariosto. 

3 Sir Mark Isambard Brunei (1769-1849), a French engineer 
who invented a plan for making block pulleys for ships, which 
was successfully tried at Portsmouth. He was also the engineer 
of the Thames Tunnel. 

4 The lines are to be found in Jonson's The Poetaster* v., i. 
in which Virgil is a character. They are a translation of JEneid, 
iv. 178-183. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 109 

ited abundance. We take the first lines on which we 
open in his version of Tasso. They are neither better 
nor worse than the rest : — 

" O thou, whoe'er thou art, whose steps are led, 
By choice or fate, these lonely shores to tread, 
No greater wonders east or west can hoast 
Than yon small island on the pleasing coast. 
If e'er thy sight would blissful scenes explore, 
The current pass, and seek the further shore." 1 

Ever since the time of Pope there has been a glut 
of lines of this sort; and we are now as little dis- 
posed to admire a man for being able to write them as 
for being able to write his name. But in the days 
of William III. such versification was rare; and a 
rhymer who had any skill in it passed for a great 
poet, just as, in the dark ages, a person who could 
write his name passed for a great clerk. Accord- 
ingly, Duke, Stepney, Granville, Walsh, 2 and others 
whose only title to fame was that they said in toler- 
able metre what might have been as well said in 
prose, or what was not worth saying at all, were hon- 
ored with marks of distinction which ought to be 
reserved for genius. With these Addison must have 
ranked, if he had not earned true and lasting glory 
by performances which very little resembled his juve- 
nile poems. 

1 Jerusalem Delivered, xiv. 58. 

2 Richard Duke (died 1710-11), George Stepney (1663- 
1707), George Granville, afterwards Lord Lansdowne (1667 ?- 
1735), and William Walsh (1663-1709) are all among the poets 
who figure in Johnson's Lives ; but even there they take up 
little room. They are all forgotten save Walsh, who is remem- 
bered through his connection with Pope and through his amusing 
poem The Despairing Lover (given in Ward's Poets). Macaulay's 
criticism of Addison's juvenile poetry is eminently just. 



110 MAC AULA Y. 

Dry den was now busied with Virgil, and obtained 
from Addison a critical preface to the "Georgies." 
In return for this service, and for other services of 
cue same kind, the veteran poet, in the postscript to 
the translation of the "iEneid," complimented his 
young friend with great liberality, and indeed with 
more liberality than sincerity. He affected to be 
afraid that his own performance would not sustain a 
comparison with the version of the fourth "Georgic," 
by "the most ingenious Mr. Addison of Oxford." 
"After his bees," added Dryden, "my latter swarm 
is scarcely worth the hiving." l 

The time had now arrived when it was necessary 
for Addison to choose a calling. Everything seemed 
to point his course towards the clerical profession. 
His habits were regular, his opinions orthodox. His 
college had large ecclesiastical preferment in its gift, 
and boasts that it has given at least one bishop to 
almost every see in England. Dr. Lancelot Addison 
held an honorable place in the Church, and had set 
his heart on seeing his son a clergyman. It is clear, 
from some expressions in the young man's rhymes, 
that his intention was to take orders. But Charles 
Montague interfered. Montague had first brought 
himself into notice by verses well timed and not con- 
temptibly written, but never, we think, rising above 
mediocrity. Fortunately for himself and for his coun- 
try, he early quitted poetry, in which he could never 
have attained a rank as high as that of Dorset 2 or 

1 A reference to the subject matter of the fourth Georgic, 
which treats of bees, and had been translated by Addison. 

2 Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset (1637-1706), a famous 
patron of men of letters and a poet who has a place in Ward's 
collection through such graceful society verse as his Song written 
at Sea. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. Ill 

Rochester, and turned his mind to official and par- 
liamentary business. It is written that the ingenious 
person who undertook to instruct Rasselas, 1 prince of 
Abyssinia, in the art of flying, ascended an eminence, 
waved his wings, sprang into the air, and instantly 
dropped into the lake. But it is added that the wings, 
which were unable to support him through the sky, 
bore him up effectually as soon as he was in the 
water. This is no bad type of the fate of Charles 
Montague, and of men like him. When he attempted 
to soar into the regions of poetical invention, he alto- 
gether failed ; but, as soon as he had descended from 
that ethereal elevation into a lower and grosser ele- 
ment, his talents instantly raised him above the mass. 
He became a distinguished financier, debater, cour- 
tier, and party leader. He still retained his fondness 
for the pursuits of his early days ; but he showed that 
fondness, not by wearying the public with his own 
feeble performances, but by discovering and encour- 
aging literary excellence in others. A crowd of wits 
and poets, who would easily have vanquished him as 
a competitor, revered him as a judge and a patron. 
In his plans for the encouragement of learning, he 
was cordially supported by the ablest and most vir- 
tuous of his colleagues, the Lord Chancellor Somers. 2 
Though both these great statesmen had a sincere love 
of letters, it was not solely from a love of letters that 
they were desirous to enlist youths of high intellectual 
qualifications in the public service. The Revolution 
had altered the whole system of government. Before 
that event, the press had been controlled by censors, 

1 See the essay on Johnson, page 35. 

2 See the essay on Milton, page 50, note 2. Besides Addison's 
youthful verses to him, the student ought to read the tribute 
which the matured man paid to him in The Freeholder, No. 39. 



112 MACAULAY. 

and the Parliament had sat only two months in eight 
years. Now the press was free, and had begun to 
exercise unprecedented influence on the public mind. 
Parliament met annually and sat long. The chief 
power in the State had passed to the House of Com- 
mons. At such a conjuncture it was natural that 
literary and oratorical talents should rise in value. 
There was danger that a government which neglected 
such talents might be subverted by them. It was, 
therefore, a profound and enlightened policy which 
led Montague and Somers to attach such talents to 
the Whig party by the strongest ties both of interest 
and of gratitude. 

It is remarkable that in a neighboring country we 
have recently seen similar effects follow from similar 
causes. The Revolution of July, 1830, established 
representative government in France. The men of 
letters instantly rose to the highest importance in the 
State. 1 At the present moment, most of the persons 
whom we see at the head both of the Administra- 
tion and of the Opposition have been professors, his- 
torians, journalists, poets. The influence of the lit- 
erary class in England during the generation which 
followed the Revolution was great, but by no means 
so great as.it has lately been in France; for in Eng- 
land the aristocracy of intellect had to contend with 
a powerful and deeply rooted aristocracy of a very 
different kind. France had no Somersets and Shrews- 
buries 2 to keep down her Addisons and Priors. 

It was in the year 1699, when Addison had just 

1 For example, Thiers, Guizot, Chateaubriand. 

2 Representative Whig statesmen of the period, — Charles 
Seymour (1661-1748), Duke of Somerset, and Charles Talbot 
(1660-1718), Duke of Shrewsbury. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 113 

completed his twenty-seventh year, that the course 
of his life was finally determined. Both the great 
chiefs of the ministry were kindly disposed towards 
him. In political opinions he already was, what he 
continued to be through life, a firm though a moder- 
ate Whig. He had addressed the most polished and 
vigorous of his early English lines to Somers, and 
had dedicated to Montague a Latin poem, truly Vir- 
gilian both in style and rhythm, on the peace of Rys- 
wick. The wish of the young poet's great friends 
was, it should seem, to employ him in the service of 
the Crown abroad. But an intimate knowledge of 
the French language was a qualification indispensable 
to a diplomatist, and this qualification Addison had 
not acquired. It was therefore thought desirable that 
he should pass some time on the Continent in prepar- 
ing himself for official employment. His own means 
were not such as would enable him to travel, but a 
pension of three hundred pounds a year was pro- 
cured for him by the interest of the lord chancellor. 
It seems to have been apprehended that some diffi- 
culty might be started by the rulers of Magdalen Col- 
lege, but the chancellor of the exchequer wrote in 
the strongest terms to Hough. The State — such was 
the purport of Montague's letter — could not at that 
time spare to the Church such a man as Addison. 
Too many high civil posts were already occupied by 
adventurers, who, destitute of every liberal art and 
sentiment, at once pillaged and disgraced the country 
which they pretended to serve. It had become neces- 
sary to recruit for the public service from a very dif- 
ferent class, — from that class of which Addison was 
the representative. The close of the minister's letter 
was remarkable. "I am called," he said, "an enemy 



114 MACAULAY. 

of the Church ; but I will never do it any other injury 
than keeping Mr. Addison out of it." 

This interference was successful; and in the sum- 
mer of 1699 Addison, made a rich man by his pen- 
sion, and still retaining his fellowship, quitted his 
beloved Oxford, and set out on his travels. He 
crossed from Dover to Calais, proceeded to Paris, and 
was received there with great kindness and politeness 
by a kinsman of his friend Montague, Charles, Earl 
of Manchester, 1 who had just been appointed ambas- 
sador to the court of France. The countess, a Whig 
and a toast, 2 was probably as gracious as her lord; 
for Addison long retained an agreeable recollection 
of the impression which she at this time made on 
him, and, in some lively lines written on the glasses 
of the Kit Cat Club, 3 described the envy which her 
cheeks, glowing with the genuine bloom of England, 
had excited among the painted beauties of Versailles. 

Louis XIV. was at this time expiating the vices of 
his youth by a devotion which had no root in rea- 
son and bore no fruit of charity. The servile litera- 
ture of France had changed its character to suit the 
changed character of the prince. No book appeared 

1 Charles Montagu, first Duke of Manchester (1660-1722), 
married Dodington, second daughter of Lord Brooke. 

2 That is, her beauty and charms were drunk to by men of 
fashion at their banquets. For the origin of the term, see The 
Taller, No. 24. 

3 The Kit Cat Club was formed about 1700 by a number of 
prominent Whigs. It got its name, according to one story, from 
that of the maker of its mutton pies — Christopher Cat. An- 
other story combines the name of the tavern-keeper, Christopher, 
with the sign of the tavern, a cat. One custom of the club was 
to have each new member name a toast, whereupon a glass was 
engraved with verses in honor of the lady. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 115 

that had not an air of sanctity. Racine, 1 who was 
just dead, had passed the close of his life in writ- 
ing sacred dramas ; and Dacier 2 was seeking for the 
Athanasian mysteries in Plato. Addison described 
this state of things in a short but lively and grace- 
ful letter to Montague. Another letter, written about 
the same time to the lord chancellor, conveyed the 
strongest assurances of gratitude and attachment. 
"The only return I can make to your lordship," said 
Addison, "will be to apply myself entirely to my 
business." With this view he quitted Paris and 
repaired to Blois, a place where it was supposed that 
the French language was spoken in its highest pur- 
ity, and where not a single Englishman could be 
found. Here he passed some months pleasantly and 
profitably. Of his way of life at Blois, one of his 
associates, an abbe named Philippeaux, gave an ac- 
count to Joseph Spence. 3 If this account is to be 
trusted, Addison studied much, mused much, talked 
little, had fits of absence, and either had no love 
affairs or was too discreet to confide them to the 
abbe. A man who, even when surrounded by fellow- 
countrymen and fellow - students, had always been 

1 Jean Racine (1639-1699), the famous French tragic dra- 
matist. 

2 Andre" Dacier (1652 ?-1722) was a distinguished French 
classical scholar, whose wife (Anne Lefevre, 1654-1720) was 
also noted as a translator. He was at this time trying to con- 
nect the chief mysteries of Christianity (represented in the 
Athanasian theology, so called after Athanasius, the great 
Bishop of Alexandria, ahout 296-373 A. D.) with the philosophy 
of Plato. 

8 (1699-1768). He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and 
was intimate with Pope and other celehrities, of whom he has 
much to say in his Anecdotes. 



116 MA CAUL AY. 

remarkably shy and silent, was not likely to be 
loquacious in a foreign tongue and among- foreign 
companions. But it is clear from Addison's letters, 
some of which were long after published in "The 
Guardian," 1 that, while he appeared to be absorbed 
in his own meditations, he was really observing 
French society with that keen and sly yet not ill- 
natured side-glance which was peculiarly his own. 

From Blois he returned to Paris, and, having now 
mastered the French language, found great pleas- 
ure in the society of French philosophers and poets. 
He gave an account, in a letter to Bishop Hough, 
of two highly interesting conversations, one with 
Malebranche, the other with Boileau. 2 Malebranche 
expressed great partiality for the English, and ex- 
tolled the genius of Newton, but shook his head when 
Hobbes was 3 mentioned, and was indeed so unjust as 
to call the author of "The Leviathan" a poor, silly 
creature. Addison's modesty restrained him from 
fully relating, in his letter, the circumstances of his 
introduction to Boileau. Boileau, having survived 
the friends and rivals of his youth, — old, deaf, and 
melancholy, — lived in retirement, seldom went either 
to court or to the Academy, 4 and was almost inacces- 

1 Nos. 101 and 104. 

2 For Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715), the philosopher, 
and Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux (1636-1711), the poetic satirist 
and literary dictator, see some history of French literature like 
Lanson's. 

3 Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), the philosopher, whose Le- 
viathan is an important treatise in theoretical politics. 

4 The famous French Academy was founded in 1635 by Car- 
dinal Richelieu, It grew out of a private club, but since its 
recognition by government has been the official representative 
of the cause of letters in France. It consists of forty members, 
and its chief collective work is its great Dictionary. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 117 

sible to strangers. Of the English and of English 
literature he knew nothing. He had hardly heard 
the name of Dry den. Some of our countrymen, in 
the warmth of their patriotism, have asserted that 
this ignorance must have been affected. We own 
that we see no ground for such a supposition. Eng- 
lish literature was to the French of the age of Louis 
XIV. what German literature was to our own grand- 
fathers. Very few, we suspect, of the accomplished 
men who, sixty or seventy years ago, used to dine 
in Leicester Square with Sir Joshua, or at Streatham 
with Mrs. Thrale, 1 had the slightest notion that Wie- 
land was one of the first wits and poets, and Lessing, 2 
beyond all dispute, the first critic in Europe. Boileau 
knew just as little about the "Paradise Lost," and 
about "Absalom and Achitophel; " 3 but he had read 
Addison's Latin poems, and admired them greatly. 
They had given him, he said, quite a new notion of 
the state of learning and taste among the English. 
Johnson will have it that these praises were insincere. 
"Nothing," says he, "is better known of Boileau 
than that he had an injudicious and peevish contempt 
of modern Latin; and therefore his profession of 
regard was probably the effect of his civility rather 
than approbation." Now, nothing is better known 
of Boileau than that he was singularly sparing of 
compliments. We do not remember that either 

1 See Boswell's Life of Johnson, and the essay on Johnson. 
Sir Joshua is, of course, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great painter. 

2 Cristoph Martin Wieland (1733-1813), the author of Obe- 
ron, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), famous for 
his dramas Minna von Barnhelm, Emilia Galotti, and Nathan der 
Weise, and especially for his great critical treatise Laocoon, or 
the Limits of Painting and Poetry. 

'•'• See Dryden's Works. It is his greatest political satire. 



118 MACAULAY. 

friendship or fear ever induced him to bestow praise 
on any 'composition which he did not approve. On 
literary questions his caustic, disdainful, and self- 
confident spirit rebelled against that authority to 
which everything else in France bowed down. He 
had the spirit to tell Louis XIV., firmly and even 
rudely, that his Majesty knew nothing about poetry, 
and admired verses which were detestable. What 
was there in Addison's position that could induce the 
satirist, whose stern and fastidious temper had been 
the dread of two generations, to turn sycophant for 
the first and last time? Nor was Boileau's contempt 
of modern Latin either injudicious or peevish. He 
thought, indeed, that no poem of the first order would 
ever be written in a dead language. And did he 
think amiss? Has not the experience of centuries 
confirmed his opinion? Boileau also thought it prob- 
able that, in the best modern Latin, a writer of the 
Augustan age would have detected ludicrous impro- 
prieties. And who can think otherwise? What mod- 
ern scholar can honestly declare that he sees the small- 
est impurity in the style of Livy? Yet is it not 
certain that, in the style of Livy, Pollio, 1 whose taste 
had been formed on the banks of the Tiber, detected 
the inelegant idiom of the Po? Has any modern 
scholar understood Latin better than Frederick the 
Great understood French? Yet is it not notorious 
that Frederick the Great — after reading, speaking, 
writing French, and nothing but French, during more 
than half a century; after unlearning his mother 

1 C. Asinius Pollio (76 b. c-4 a. d.), the famous Roman 
general, author, and patron of learning. (See Virgil's fourth 
Eclogue.) Nearly all his writings are lost save some letters to 
Cicero. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 119 

tongue in order to learn French ; after living famil- 
iarly during many years with French associates — 
could not, to the last, compose in French without 
imminent risk of committing some mistake which 
would have moved a smile in the literary circles of 
Paris ? Do we believe that Erasmus 1 and Fracasto- 
rius 2 wrote Latin as well as Dr. Robertson 3 and Sir 
Walter Scott wrote English ? And are there not in 
the "Dissertation on India," the last of Dr. Robert- 
son's works, in "Waverley," in "Marmion," Scotti- 
cisms at which a London apprentice would laugh? 
But does it follow, because we think thus, that we 
can find nothing to admire in the noble alcaics 4 of 
Gray, or in the playful elegiacs 5 of Vincent Bourne? 6 
Surely not. Nor was Boileau so ignorant or tasteless 
as to be incapable of appreciating good modern Latin. 
In the very letter to which Johnson alludes, 7 Boileau 

1 Desiclerius Erasmus (1467 ?-1536), the great Dutch hu- 
manist, theological controversialist, and satirist. See Fronde's 
lectures on him, and Charles Reade's The Cloister and the 
Hearth. 

2 Hieronymo Fracastorio (1483-1553), a learned Italian phy- 
sician and poet. 

8 See the essay on Johnson, page 60, note. 

4 Lines in a lyric strophe invented hy Alcseus, the Greek poet. 
Perhaps the hest of Gray's alcaics is the fragment beginning 
" O lachrymarum fons." 

5 That is, poems written in a succession of distichs consisting 
of a dactylic hexameter followed by a dactjdic pentameter. 
The measure gets its name from having been early used in 
poems of lament. 

6 (1695 7-1747.) An usher in Westminster School, who wrote 
entirely in Latin verse of excellent quality. Cowper, his pupil, 
has translated many of his verses. 

7 In his Life of Addison, to which several references are 
made. 



120 MACAULAY. 

says: "Ne croyez pas pourtant que je veuille par la 
blamer les vers Latins que vous m'avez envoyes d'un 
de vos illustres aeademiciens. Je les ai trouves fort 
beaux, et dignes de Vida et de Sannazar, mais non 
pas d'Horace et de Virgile." 1 Several poems in 
modern Latin have been praised by Boileau quite as 
liberally as it was his habit to praise anything-. He 
says, for example, of the Pere Fraguier's 2 epigrams, 
that Catullus seems to have come to life again. But 
the best proof that Boileau did not feel the undis- 
cerning contempt for modern Latin verses which has 
been imputed to him is, that he wrote and published 
Latin verses in several metres. Indeed, it happens, 
curiously enough, that the most severe censure ever 
pronounced by him on modern Latin is conveyed in 
Latin hexameters. We allude to the fragment which 
begins : — 

" Quid numeris iterum me balbutire Latinis, 
Longe Alpes citra natuni de patre Sicambro, 
Musa, jubes ? " 3 

For these reasons we feel assured that the praise 
which Boileau bestowed on the "Machinae Gesticu- 

1 " Don't think, however, that I want by that to blame the 
Latin verses of one of your illustrious Academicians that you 
have sent me. I have found them very beautiful and worthy of 
Vida and of Sannazaro, but not of Horace and of Virgil." From 
letter to Brossette, October 6, 1701. Marco Girolamo Vida 
(1489 ?-156G) and Giacopo Sannazaro (1458-1530) were Ital- 
ian poets noted for their Latin verses. Vida's best known work 
is his Art of Poetry • Sannazaro's is his Arcadia (not in Latin). 

2 Claude Francois Fraguier (1GG6-1728), a French Jesuit, 
who wrote good Latin verses. 

3 " Why, Muse, do you bid me, born of a Sicambrian father 
a long way this side of the Alps, to stammer again in Latin 
numbers ? " The opening lines of a fragmentary Satira. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 121 

lantes" and the " Gerano-Pygmaeomachia " 2 was sin- 
cere. He certainly opened himself to Addison with 
a freedom which was a sure indication of esteem. 
Literature was the chief subject of conversation. The 
old man talked on his favorite theme much and well, 
indeed, as his young hearer thought, incomparably 
well. Boileau had undoubtedly some of the qual- 
ities of a great critic. He wanted imagination, but 
he had strong sense. His literary code was formed 
on narrow principles, but in applying it he showed 
great judgment and penetration. In mere style, ab- 
stracted from the ideas of which style is the garb, his 
taste is excellent. He was well acquainted with the 
great Greek writers; and, though unable fully to 
appreciate their creative genius, admired the majestic 
simplicity of their manner, and had learned from 
them to despise bombast and tinsel. It is easy, we 
think, to discover in "The Spectator " and "The Guar- 
dian" traces of the influence, in part salutary and in 
part pernicious, which the mind of Boileau had on 
the mind of Addison. 

While Addison was at Paris, an event took place 
which made that capital a disagreeable residence for 
an Englishman and a Whig. Charles, 2 second of the 
name, King of Spain, died, and bequeathed his do- 
minions to Philip, Duke of Anjou, a younger son of 
the Dauphin. The King of France, in direct viola- 
tion of his engagements both with Great Britain and 
with the States General, 3 accepted the bequest on 

1 Titles of Addison's Latin poems, A Puppet-Show and The 
Battle of the Cranes and Pygmies. 

2 1661-1700. He was a wretchedly incompetent monarch. 

8 Holland, or rather the representative assembly of the prov- 
inces of the Netherlands. 



122 MACAULAY. 

behalf of his grandson. The house of Bourbon was 
at the summit of human grandeur. England had 
been outwitted, and found herself in a situation at 
once degrading and perilous. The people of France, 
not presaging the calamities by which they were des- 
tined to expiate the perfidy of their sovereign, went 
mad with pride and delight. Every man looked as 
if a great estate had just been left him. "The 
French conversation," said Addison, "begins to grow 
insupportable ; that which was before the vainest na- 
tion in the world is now worse than ever." Sick of 
the arrogant exultation of the Parisians, and prob- 
ably foreseeing that the peace between France and 
England could not be of long duration, he set off for 
Italy. 

In December, 1700, * he embarked at Marseilles. 
As he glided along the Ligurian 2 coast, he was de- 
lighted by the sight of myrtles and olive-trees, which 
retained their verdure under the winter solstice. 
Soon, however, he encountered one of the black 
storms of the Mediterranean. The captain of the 
ship gave up all for lost, and confessed himself to a 
Capuchin who happened to be on board. The English 
heretic, in the mean time, fortified himself against 
the terrors of death with devotions of a very different 
kind. How strong an impression this perilous voy- 
age made on him appears from the ode, "How are 

1 Macanlay's footnote: It is strange that Addison should, in 
the first line of his travels, have misdated his departure from 
Marseilles by a whole year, and still more strange that this slip 
of the pen, which throws the whole narrative into inextricable 
confusion, should have been repeated in a succession of editions, 
and never detected by Tickell or by Hurd. 

2 The northwestern coast of Italy, so called from the primi- 
tive inhabitants, the Ligures. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 123 

thy servants blest, O Lord!" which was long' after 
published in "The Spectator." After some daj^s of 
discomfort and danger, Addison was glad to land at 
Savona, 1 and to make his way, over mountains where 
no road had yet been hewn out by art, to the city of 
Genoa. 

At Genoa, still ruled by her own doge and by the 
nobles whose names were inscribed on her Book of 
Gold, 2 Addison made a short stay. He admired the 
narrow streets overhung by long lines of towering 
palaces, the walls rich with frescoes, the gorgeous tem- 
ple of the Annunciation, and the tapestries whereon 
were recorded the long glories of the house of Doria. 3 
Thence he hastened to Milan, where he contemplated 
the Gothic magnificence of the cathedral with more 
wonder than pleasure. He passed Lake Benacus 4 
while a gale was blowing, and saw the waves raging 
as they raged when Virgil looked upon them. At 
Venice, then the gayest city in Europe, the traveler 
spent the Carnival, the gayest season of the year, in 
the midst of masques, dances, and serenades. Here 
he was at once diverted and provoked by the ab- 
surd dramatic pieces which then disgraced the Italian 
stage. To one of those pieces, however, he was in- 
debted for a valuable hint. He was present when 
a ridiculous play on the death of Cato was performed. 
Cato, it seems, was in love with the daughter of 
Scipio. The lady had given her heart to Caesar. 
The rejected lover determined to destroy himself. 

1 On the coast about twenty-five miles west from Genoa. 

2 This register of nobility is usually connected with Venice. 

3 Doria, the celebrated family of Genoa, of whom the chief 
representative was Andrea, the great admiral (1466-1560). 

4 Now Lago di Garda, the largest of the Italian lakes. 



124 MA CAUL AY. 

He appeared seated in his library, a dagger in his 
hand, a Plutarch and a Tasso before him; and in this 
position he pronounced a soliloquy before he struck 
the blow. We are surprised that so remarkable a 
circumstance as this should have escaped the notice 
of all Addison's biographers. There cannot, we con- 
ceive, be the smallest doubt that this scene, in spite 
of its absurdities and anachronisms, struck the trav- 
eler's imagination, and suggested to him the thought 
of bringing "Cato " on the English stage. It is well 
known that about this time he began his tragedy, and 
that he finished the first four acts before he returned 
to England. 

On his way from Venice to Rome, he was drawn 
some miles out of the beaten road by a wish to see 
the smallest independent state in Europe. On a rock 
where the snow still lay, though the Italian spring 
was now far advanced, was perched the little fortress 
of San Marino. 1 The roads which led to the secluded 
town were so bad that few travelers had ever visited 
it, and none had ever published an account of it. 
Addison could not suppress a good-natured smile at 
the simple manners and institutions of this singular 
community; but he observed, with the exultation of 
a Whig, that the rude mountain tract which formed 
the territory of the republic swarmed with an honest, 
healthy, and contented peasantry, while the rich plain 
which surrounded the metropolis of civil and spiritual 
tyranny was scarcely less desolate than the uncleared 
wilds of America. 

At Rome, Addison remained on his first visit only 
long enough to catch a glimpse of St. Peter's and of 

1 Still a tiny republic covering only thirty-three miles square. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 125 

the Pantheon. His haste is the more extraordinary 
because the Holy Week was close at hand. He has 
given no hint which can enable ns to pronounce why 
he chose to fly from a spectacle which every year 
allures from distant regions persons of far less taste 
and sensibility than his. Possibly, traveling, as he 
did, at the charge of a government distinguished by 
its enmity to the Church of Rome, he may have 
thought that it would be imprudent in him to assist 
at the most magnificent rite of that church. Many 
eyes would be upon him, and he might find it difficult 
to behave in such a manner as to give offense neither 
to his patrons in England nor to those among whom 
he resided. Whatever his motives may have been, 
he turned his back on the most august and affecting- 
ceremony which is known among men, and posted 
along the Appian Way l to Naples. 

Naples was then destitute of what are now, per- 
haps, its chief attractions. The lovely bay and the 
awful mountain were indeed there; but a farmhouse 
stood on the theatre of Herculaneum, and rows of 
vines grew over the streets of Pompeii. 2 The tem- 
ples of Paastum 3 had not, indeed, been hidden from 
the eye of man by any great convulsion of nature; 
but, strange to say, their existence was a secret even 
to artists and antiquaries. Though situated within a 

1 The oldest and best known of the Roman roads, named 
after its constructor, Appins Claudius, the great orator and 
statesman (died after 280 b. c). 

2 See Bulwer's famous novel, The Last Days of Pompeii. 
Herculaneum was discovered by accident in 1713, Pompeii in 
1750. The work of excavation is still going on. 

3 Psestum, originally the Greek Posidonia; it was sacked in 
the first and eleventh centuries, a. d., and deserted in the 
sixteenth. 



126 MACAU LAY. 

few hours' journey of a great capital, where Salvator * 
had not long before painted, and where Vico 2 was then 
lecturing, those noble remains were as little known to 
Europe as the ruined cities overgrown by the forests 
of Yucatan. What was to be seen at Naples, Ad- 
dison saw. He climbed Vesuvius, explored the tun- 
nel of Posilipo, 3 and wandered among the vines and 
almond-trees of Caprea?. 4 But neither the wonders 
of nature nor those of art could so occupy his atten- 
tion as to prevent him from noticing, though curso- 
rily, the abuses of the government and the misery 
of the people. The great kingdom which had just 
descended to Philip V. 5 was in a state of paralytic 
dotage. Even Castile and Aragon were sunk in 
wretchedness. Yet, compared with the Italian de- 
pendencies of the Spanish Crown, Castile and Aragon 
might be called prosperous. It is clear that all the 
observations which Addison made in Italy tended to 
confirm him in the political opinions which he had 
adopted at home. To the last he always spoke of 
foreign travel as the best cure for Jacobitism. In his 
"Freeholder" 6 the Tory fox-hunter asks what travel- 

1 Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), a famous Italian landscape and 
portrait painter. 

2 Giovanni Battista Vico (1668-1744 ?), a noted Neapolitan 
jurist and pioneer in philosophic history. 

3 Posilipo (Lat. Pausilypum) is a promontory hetween Naples 
and Puteoli. The grotto, which is well described by Addison, 
was supposed to have been made by Virgil in his capacity of ma- 
gician. 

4 Caprese (Capri), an island, noted for its beautiful scenery, 
on the north side of the Bay of Naples. 

5 Louis XIV.'s grandson (1683-1746), over whom the War of 
the Spanish Succession was fought, and who was finally left on 
the throne of Spain. Naples at this time belonged to Spain. 

6 The Freeholder was a weekly political sheet published by 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 127 

ing is good for, except to teach a man to jabber 
French and to talk against passive obedience. 

From Naples, Addison returned to Rome by sea, 
along the coast which his favorite Virgil had cele- 
brated. The felucca passed the headland where the 
oar and trumpet were placed by the Trojan adventur- 
ers on the tomb of Misenus, 1 and anchored at night 
under the shelter of the fabled promontory of Circe. 2 
The voyage ended in the Tiber, still overhung with 
dark verdure, and still turbid with yellow sand, as 
when it met the eyes of iEneas. 3 From the ruined 
port of Ostia the stranger hurried to Rome, and at 
Rome he remained during those hot and sickly 
months when, even in the Augustan age, all who 
could make their escape fled from mad dogs and from 
streets black with funerals, to gather the first figs of 
the season in the country. It is probable that when 
he, long after, poured forth in verse his gratitude to 
the Providence which had enabled him to breathe 
unhurt in tainted air, he was thinking of the August 
and September which he passed at Rome. 

It was not till the latter end of October that he 
tore himself away from the masterpieces of ancient 
and modern art which are collected in the city so 

Addison from Friday, December 23, 1715, to Friday, June 29, 
1716 (fifty-five numbers), in support of the House of Hanover, 
then just established, and recently threatened by the uprising 
under the Old Pretender. The essays as a whole are not particu- 
larly interesting. That referred to by Macaulay is No. 22, and 
is considered one of Addison's best. 

1 See JEneid, vi. 1G2 seq. Misenus was a trumpeter said to 
have been burned on the promontory that bears his name. 

2 Monte Circeio, a promontory thought to have been once 
the island of the enchantress Circe. 

3 JEneid, vii. 1-24. 



128 M AC AULA Y. 

long the mistress of the world. He then journeyed 
northward, passed through Sienna, and for a moment 
forgot his prejudices in favor of classic architecture 
as he looked on the magnificent cathedral. At Flor- 
ence he spent some days with the Duke of Shrews- 
bury, 1 who — cloyed with the pleasures of ambition 
and impatient of its pains, fearing both parties and 
loving neither — had determined to hide in an Ital- 
ian retreat talents and accomplishments which, if they 
had been united with fixed principles and civil cour- 
age, might have made him the foremost man of his 
age. These days, we are told, passed pleasantly, and 
we can easily believe it; for Addison was a delight- 
ful companion when he was at his ease ; and the duke, 
though he seldom forgot that he was a Talbot, had 
the invaluable art of putting at ease all who came 
near him. 

Addison gave some time to Florence, and espe- 
cially to the sculptures in the Museum, which he 
preferred even to those of the Vatican. He then 
pursued his journey through a country in which the 
ravages of the last war were still discernible, and in 
which all men were looking forward with dread to 
a still fiercer conflict. Eugene 2 had already de- 
scended from the Rhaetian Alps to dispute with Cati- 
nat 3 the rich plain of Lombardy. The faithless ruler 
of Savoy 4 was still reckoned among the allies of 

1 See p. 112, note 2. Also Macaulay's History, chap. xxii. 

2 Prince Eugene (1663-1736), next in prowess to Marlborough 
among the allies in the War of the Spanish Succession. 

3 Nicolas Catinat (1637-1712), Marshal of France, a fine sol- 
dier and a noble character. 

4 Victor Amadeus II. (1666-1732), Duke of Savoy, first King 
of Sardinia (1720). Resigned to his son in 1730. See Brown- 
ing's play, King Victor and King Charles. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 129 

Louis. England had not yet actually declared war 
against France, but Manchester l had left Paris, and 
the negotiations which produced the Grand Alliance 2 
against the house of Bourbon were in progress. Un- 
der such circumstances, it was desirable for an Eng- 
lish traveler to reach neutral ground without delay. 
Addison resolved to cross Mont Cenis. It was De- 
cember, and the road was very different from that 
which now reminds the stranger of the power and 
genius of Napoleon. The winter, however, was mild ; 
and the passage was, for those times, easy. To this 
journey Addison alluded when, in the ode which we 
have already quoted, he said that for him the Divine 
Goodness had warmed the hoary Alpine hills. 3 

It was in the midst of the eternal snow that he 
composed his "Epistle" to his friend Montague, now 
Lord Halifax. That "Epistle," once widely re- 
nowned, is now known only to curious readers, and 
will hardly be considered by those to whom it is 
known as in any perceptible degree heightening Addi- 
son's fame. It is, however, decidedly superior to any 
English composition which he had previously pub- 
lished. Nay, we think it quite as good as any poem 
in heroic metre which appeared during the interval 
between the death of Diyden and the publication of 
the "Essay on Criticism." 4 It contains passages as 
good as the second-rate passages of Pope, and would 
have added to the reputation of Parnell or Prior. 5 

1 See page 114, note 1. 

2 That is, of Germany, Holland, and England against France, 
by treaty of September 7, 1701. 

8 " How are thy servants blest, O Lord ! " See page 122. 

4 Pope published this in 1711, two years after writing it. 

5 Macaulay's praise is not high, because the years 1700-1710 



130 MAC A UL AY. 

But, whatever be the literary merits or defects of 
the "Epistle," it undoubtedly does honor to the prin- 
ciples and spirit of the author. Halifax had now 
nothing to give. He had fallen from power, had 
been held up to obloquy, had been impeached by the 
House of Commons, and, though his peers had dis- 
missed the impeachment, had, as it seemed, little 
chance of ever again filling high office. The "Epis- 
tle," written at such a time, is one among many 
proofs that there was no mixture of cowardice or 
meanness in the suavity and moderation which dis- 
tinguished Addison from all the other public men of 
those stormy times. 

At Geneva the traveler learned that a partial 
change of ministry had taken place in England, and 
that the Earl of Manchester had become secretary of 
state. Manchester exerted himself to serve his young 
friend. It was thought advisable that an English 
agent should be near the person of Eugene in Italy; 
and Addison, whose diplomatic education was now 
finished, was the man selected. He was preparing to 
enter on his honorable functions when all his pros- 
pects were for a time darkened by the death of Wil- 
liam III. 1 

Anne had long felt a strong aversion — personal, 
political, and religious — to the Whig party. That 
aversion appeared in the first measures of her reign. 
Manchester was deprived of the seals after he had held 
them only a few weeks. Neither Somers nor Halifax 

were barren of good poetry. Gay had not yet published, and 
Ambrose Philips's pastorals were of little moment. Addison's 
lines might have added to Prior's contemporary reputation, but 
then Prior is not now celebrated for his heroic verse, but for 
his vers de societe, some of which were published in 1707. 
1 March 8, 1701. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 131 

was sworn of the Privy Council. Addison shared the 
fate of his three patrons. His hopes of employment 
in the public service were at an end; his pension was 
stopped; and it was necessary for him to support 
himself by his own exertions. He became tutor to 
a young' English traveler, and appears to have ram- 
bled with his pupil over great part of Switzerland 
and Germany. At this time he wrote his pleasing- 
treatise on medals. It was not published till after 
his death, but several distinguished scholars saw the 
manuscript, and gave just praise to the grace of the 
style and to the learning and ingenuity evinced by 
the quotations. 

From Germany, Addison repaired to Holland, 
where he learned the melancholy news of his father's 
death. After passing some months in the United 
Provinces, he returned, about the close of the year 
1703, to England. He was there cordially received 
by his friends, and introduced by them into the Kit 
Cat Club, a society in which were collected all the 
various talents and accomplishments which then gave 
lustre to the Whig party. 

Addison was, during some months after his return 
from the Continent, hard pressed by pecuniary diffi- 
culties; but it was soon in the power of his noble 
patrons to serve him effectually. A political change 
— silent and gradual, but of the highest importance — 
was in daily progress. The accession of Anne had 
been hailed by the Tories with transports of joy and 
hope, and for a time it seemed that the Whigs had 
fallen never to rise again. The throne was sur- 
rounded by men supposed to be attached to the pre- 
rogative and to the Church; and among these none 
stood so high in the favor of the sovereign as the 



182 MACAULAY. 

Lord Treasurer Godolphin * and the Captain-General 
Marlborough. 

The country gentlemen and country clergymen had 
fully expected that the policy of these ministers would 
be directly opposed to that which had been almost 
constantly followed by William ; that the landed in- 
terest would be favored at the expense of trade ; that 
no addition would be made to the funded debt; that 
the privileges conceded to Dissenters by the late king 
would be curtailed, if not withdrawn; that the war 
with France, if there must be such a war, would, on 
our part, be almost entirely naval; and that the gov- 
ernment would avoid close connections with foreign 
powers, and, above all, with Holland. 

But the country gentlemen and country clergymen 
were fated to be deceived, not for the last time. The 
prejudices and passions which raged without control 
in vicarages, in cathedral closes, and in the manor 
houses of fox-hunting squires, were not shared by the 
chiefs of the ministry. Those statesmen saw that it 
was both for the public interest and for their own 
interest to adopt a Whig policy, at least as respected 
the alliances of the country and the conduct of the 
war. But, if the foreign policy of the Whigs were 
adopted, it was impossible to abstain from adopting, 
also, their financial policy. The natural consequences 
followed. The rigid Tories were alienated from the 
government. ■ The votes of the Whigs became neces- 
sary to it. The votes of the Whigs could be secured 
only by further concessions, and further concessions 
the Queen was induced to make. 

1 Sidney, Earl of Godolphin (1635-1712), Queen Anne's 
Lord Treasurer, noted for his sagacity and administrative ca- 
pacity. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 133 

At the beginning' of the year 1704, the state of 
parties bore a close analogy to the state of parties in 
182G. In 1826, as in 1704, there was a Tory ministry 
divided into two hostile sections. The position of Mr. 
Canning * and his friends in 1826 corresponded to that 
which Marlborough and Godolphin occupied in 1704. 
Nottingham and Jersey 2 were, in 1704, what Lord 
Eldon and Lord Westmoreland 3 were in 1826. The 
Whigs of 1704 were in a situation resembling that in 
which the Whigs of 1826 stood. In 1704 Somers, 
Halifax, Sunderland, 4 Cowper, 5 were not in office. 
There was no avowed coalition between them and the 
moderate Tories. It is probable that no direct com- 
munication tending to such a coalition had yet taken 
place ; yet all men saw that such a coalition was inev- 
itable, nay, that it was already half formed. Such, 
or nearly such, was the state of things when tidings 
arrived of the great battle fought at Blenheim on the 
13th of August, 1704. By the Whigs the news was 

1 George Canning (1770-1827), a statesman and orator prom- 
inent daring and after the wars with Napoleon. He favored 
Catholic emancipation, freer trade, etc., and was opposed hy 
the Duke of Wellington, Lord Eldon, and Mr. (afterwards Sir 
Robert) Peel. 

2 Daniel Finch, second Earl of Nottingham (1647-1730), 
Secretary of State under William III. and Anne; and Edward 
Villiers, Earl of Jersey (1656-1711), Secretary of State, and 
prominent diplomat. 

3 John Scott, Earl of Eldon (1751-1838), the great Lord 
Chancellor ; John Fane, Earl of Westmoreland (1759-1841), 
who held the office of Lord Privy Seal for many years. 

4 Charles Spencer, third Earl of Sunderland (1674-1722), 
Marlborough's son-in-law and a prominent politician. 

3 WUliam, Earl Cowper (1664-1723), Lord Chancellor in 
1707. 



134 M AC AULA Y. 

hailed with transports of joy and pride. No fault, 
no cause of quarrel, could be remembered by them 
against the commander whose genius had in one day 
changed the face of Europe, saved the imperial 
throne, 1 humbled the house of Bourbon, and secured 
the Act of Settlement 2 against foreign hostility. The 
feeling of the Tories was very different. They could 
not, indeed, without imprudence, openly express re- 
gret at an event so glorious to their country; but 
their congratulations were so cold and sullen as to 
give deep disgust to the victorious general and his 
friends. 

Godolphinwas not a reading man. Whatever time 
he could spare from business he was in the habit of 
spending at Newmarket 3 or at the card table. But 
he was not absolutely indifferent to poetry, and he 
was too intelligent an observer not to perceive that 
literature was a formidable engine of political war- 
fare, and that the great Whig leaders had strength- 
ened their party, and raised their character, by ex- 
tending a liberal and judicious patronage to good 
writers. Pie was mortified, and not without reason, 
by the exceeding badness of the poems which appeared 
in honor of the battle of Blenheim. One of these 
poems has been rescued from oblivion by the exqui- 
site absurdity of three lines : — 

1 That is, of the Holy Roman Empire, occupied by the House 
of Hapsburg, represented by Joseph I. 

2 The great Act of 1701, fixing the succession of the Throne, 
in default of heirs to William and Anne, in Sophia, Electress 
of Hanover, and her heirs. Sophia was the granddaughter of 
James I. 

3 A racing centre noted from the time of James I. See 
Macaulay's History (index). 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 135 

" Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, 
And each man mounted on his capering heast ; 
Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals." l 

Where to procure better verses the treasurer did 
not know. He understood how to negotiate a loan 
or remit a subsidy; he was also well versed in the 
history of running-horses and fighting-cocks ; but his 
acquaintance among the poets was very small. He 
consulted Halifax, but Halifax affected to decline the 
office of adviser. He had, he said, done his best, 
when he had power, to encourage men whose abilities 
and acquirements might do honor to their country. 
Those times were over. Other maxims had prevailed. 
Merit was suffered to pine in obscurity, and the 
public money was squandered on the undeserving. 
"I do know," he added, "a gentleman who would 
celebrate the battle in a manner worthy of the sub- 
ject, but I will not name him." Godolphin, who 
was expert at the soft answer which turneth away 
wrath, and who was under the necessity of paying 
court to the Whigs, gently replied that there was too 
much ground for Halifax's complaints, but that what 
was amiss should in time be rectified, and that in the 
mean time the services of a man such as Halifax had 
described should be liberally rewarded. Halifax then 
mentioned Addison, but, mindful of the dignity, as well 
as of the pecuniary interest, of his friend, insisted 
that the minister should apply in the most courteous 
manner to Addison himself, and this Godolphin prom- 
ised to do. 

Addison then occupied a garret up three pair of 

1 This quotation has escaped the search of the editor, and of 
several scholars, and, what is more curious, escaped the commen- 
tators on Martinus Scriblerus. 



136 MA CAUL AY. 

stairs, over a small shop in the Haymarket. In this 
humble lodging he was surprised, on the morning 
which followed the conversation between Godolphin 
and Halifax, by a visit from no less a person than 
the Right Hon. Henry Boyle, then chancellor of the 
exchequer, and afterwards Lord Carleton. 1 This high- 
born minister had been sent by the lord treasurer 
as ambassador to the needy poet. Addison readily 
undertook the proposed task, — a task which, to so 
good a Whig, was probably a pleasure. When the 
poem was little more than half finished, he showed 
it to Godolphin, who was delighted with it, and par- 
ticularly with the famous similitude of the angel. 2 
Addison was instantly appointed to a commissioner- 
ship 3 worth about two hundred pounds a year, and 
was assured that this appointment was only an ear- 
nest of greater favors. 

"The Campaign" came forth, and was as much 
admired by the public as by the minister. It pleases 
us less, on the whole, than the "Epistle" to Hali- 
fax; yet it undoubtedly ranks high among the poems 
which appeared during the interval between the death 
of Dryden and the dawn of Pope's genius. The chief 
merit of "The Campaign," we think, is that which 
was noticed by Johnson, — the manly and rational 

1 Also Secretary of State under Anne. The third volume of 
The Spectator was dedicated to him. He died in 1725. 
2 " So when an angel by divine command 

With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, 
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past, 
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast, 
And, pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform, 
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm." 
8 Of appeals. He succeeded the great philosopher John 
Locke. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 137 

rejection of fiction. The first great poet whose works 
have come down to us sang of war long before war 
became a science or a trade. If, in his time, there 
was enmity between two little Greek towns, each 
poured forth its crowd of citizens, ignorant of disci- 
pline, and armed with implements of labor rudely 
turned into weapons. On each side appeared con- 
spicuous a few chiefs, whose wealth had enabled them 
to procure good armor, horses, and chariots, and 
whose leisure had enabled them to practice military 
exercises. One such chief ■ — if he were a man of 
great strength, agility, and courage — would proba- 
bly be more formidable than twenty common men; 
and the force and dexterity with which he flung his 
spear might have no inconsiderable share in deciding 
the event of the day. Such were probably the battles 
with which Homer was familiar. But Homer related 
the actions of men of a former generation; of men 
who sprang from the gods, and communed with the 
gods face to face; of men, one of whom could with 
ease hurl rocks which two sturdy hinds of a later 
period would be unable even to lift. He therefore 
naturally represented their martial exploits as resem- 
bling in kind, but far surpassing in magnitude, those 
of the stoutest and most expert combatants of his 
own age. Achilles clad in celestial armor, drawn by 
celestial coursers, grasping the spear which none but 
himself could raise, driving all Troy and Lycia before 
him, and choking Scamander with dead, was only a 
magnificent exaggeration of the real hero, who, strong, 
fearless, accustomed to the use of weapons, guarded 
by a shield and helmet of the best Sidonian fabric, 
and whirled along by horses of Thessalian breed, 
struck down with his own right arm foe after foe. 



138 MACAULAY. 

In all rude societies similar notions are found. There 
are at this day countries where the Lifeguardsman 
Shaw 1 would be considered as a much greater warrior 
than the Duke of Wellington. Bonaparte loved to 
describe the astonishment with which the Mamelukes 2 
looked at his diminutive figure. Mourad Bey, 3 dis- 
tinguished above all his fellows by his bodily strength, 
and by the skill with which he managed his horse 
and his sabre, could not believe that a man who was 
scarcely five feet high, and rode like a butcher, could 
be the greatest soldier in Europe. 

Homer's descriptions of war had, therefore, as 
much truth as poetry requires. But truth was alto- 
gether wanting to the performances of those who, 
writing about battles which had scarcely anything in 
common with the battles of his times, servilely imi- 
tated his manner. The folly of Silius Italicus, 4 in 
particular, is positively nauseous. He undertook to 
record in verse the vicissitudes of a great struggle 
between generals of the first order; and his narrative 
is made up of the hideous wounds which these gener- 
als inflicted with their own hands. Asdrubal flings 

1 "Jack" Shaw (1789-1815). A famous pugilist who after- 
wards wou further distinction by his bravery at the battle of 
Waterloo. He killed ten French cuirassiers before falling- him- 
self. 

2 The Mamelukes were a powerful body of soldiers, originally 
slaves, who ruled Egypt through a sultan of their choosing 
from 1254 to 1517, when their kingdom was overthrown by 
Selim I. Mameluke beys were left in command, however, and 
from 1750 to 1811 the power of Turkey was merely nominal. 
Iu the latter year they were massacred by Mohammed Ali. 

3 A Mameluke chieftain who resisted Napoleon. Died in 
1801. 

4 See page 101, note 2. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 139 

a spear which grazes the shoulder of the consul Nero, 
but Nero sends his spear into Asdrubal's side. Fa- 
bius slays Thuris and Butes, and Maris and Arses, 
and the long-haired Adherbes, and the gigantic Thy- 
lis, and Sapharus and Montesus, and the trumpeter 
Morinus. Hannibal runs Perusinus through the groin 
with a stake, and breaks the backbone of Telesinus 
with a huge stone. 1 This detestable fashion was 
copied in modern times, and continued to prevail 
down to the age of Addison. Several versifiers had 
described William turning thousands to flight by his 
single prowess, and dyeing the Boyne with Irish 
blood. Nay, so estimable a writer as John Philips, 2 
the author of "The Splendid Shilling," represented 
Marlborough as having won the battle of Blenheim 
merely by strength of muscle and skill in fence. The 
following lines may serve as an example : — 

" Churchill, viewing where 
The violence of Tallard 3 most prevailed, 
Came to oppose his slaughtering arm. With speed 
Precipitate he rode, urging his way 
O'er hills of gasping heroes, and fallen steeds 
Rolling in death. Destruction, grim with blood, 
Attends his furious course. Around his head 
The glowing balls play innocent, while he 
With dire impetuous sway deals fatal blows 
Among the flying Gauls. In Gallic blood 
He dyes his reeking sword, and strews the ground 
With headless ranks. What can they do ? Or how 
Withstand his wide destroying sword ? " 

1 All these incidents are taken from Silius's poem on the 
Punic War. 

2 (1676-1708.) His poem named was a humorous imitation 
of Miltonic blank-verse. The verses on Blenheim can be found 
in Chalmers's collection. 

3 Camille de Tallard (1652-1728), the French marshal who 
commanded at Blenheim. 



140 MACAULAY. 

Addison, with excellent sense and taste, departed 
from this ridiculous fashion. He reserved his praise 
for the qualities which made Marlborough truly great, 
— energy, sagacity, military science; but, above all, 
the poet extolled the firmness of that mind which, in 
the midst of confusion, uproar, and slaughter, exam- 
ined and disposed everything with the serene wisdom 
of a higher intelligence. 

Here it was that he introduced the famous compari- 
son of Marlborough to an angel guiding the whirl- 
wind. We will not dispute the general justice of 
Johnson's remarks on this passage. But we must 
point out one circumstance which appears to have 
escaped all the critics. The extraordinary effect 
which this simile produced when it first appeared, 
and which to the following generation seemed inex- 
plicable, is doubtless to be chiefly attributed to a 
line which most readers now regard as a feeble paren- 
thesis: — 

" Such as, of late, o'er pale Britannia pass'cl." 

Addison spoke, not of a storm, but of the storm. 
The great tempest of November, 1703, * — the only 
tempest which in our latitude has equaled the rage of 
a tropical hurricane, — had left a dreadful recollection 
in the minds of all men. No other tempest was ever, 
in this country, the occasion of a parliamentary ad- 
dress or of a public fast. Whole fleets had been cast 
away. Large mansions had been blown down. One 
prelate had been buried beneath the ruins of his pal- 
ace. 2 London and Bristol had presented the appear- 
ance of cities just sacked. Hundreds of families were 
still in mourning. The prostrate trunks of large 

1 Nov. 26-Dec. 1. 

2 The Bishop of Bath and Wells, Richard Kidder (born 1633). 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 141 

tiers, and the ruins of houses, still attested, in all 
the southern counties, the fury of the blast. The 
popularity which the simile of the angel enjoyed 
among Addison's contemporaries has always seemed 
to us to be a remarkable instance of the advantage 
which, in rhetoric and poetry, the particular has over 
the general. 1 

Soon after "The Campaign," was published Addi- 
son's narrative of his travels in Italy. The first 
effect produced by this narrative was disappointment. 
The crowd of readers, who expected politics and scan- 
dal, speculations on the projects of Victor Amadeus, 2 
and anecdotes about the jollities of convents and the 
amours of cardinals and nuns, were confounded by 
finding that the writer's mind was much more occu- 
pied by the war between the Trojans and Rutulians 3 
than by the war between France and Austria ; and that 
he seemed to have heard no scandal of later date than 
the gallantries of the Empress Faustina. 4 In time, 
however, the judgment of the many was overruled by 
that of the few ; and before the book was reprinted it 
was so eagerly sought that it sold for five times the 
original price. It is still read with pleasure. The 
style is pure and flowing; the classical quotations and 
allusions are numerous and happy ; and we are now 
and then charmed by that singularly humane and 

1 See in the essay on Milton the comparison of Milton and 
Dante. 

2 See page 128, note 4. 

3 An aboriginal people who under Turnns disputed Italy with 
the Trojans under iEneas. See the JEneid. 

4 Faustina may refer either to the wife of the Emperor Anto- 
ninus Pius or to her daughter, the wife of Marcus Aurelius ; 
both were accused of shameless profligacy, with how much truth 
it is hard to determine. 



142 MACAULAY. 

delicate humor iu which Addison excelled all men. 
Yet this agreeable work, even when considered merely 
as the history of a literary tour, may justly be cen- 
sured on account of its faults of omission. We have 
already said that, though rich in extracts from the 
Latin poets, it contains scarcely any references to the 
Latin orators and historians. We must add that it 
contains little, or rather no information respecting 
the history and literature of modern Italy. To the 
best of our remembrance, Addison does not mention 
Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boiardo, Berni, Lorenzo 
de' Medici, or Machiavelli. 1 He coldly tells us that 
at Ferrara he saw the tomb of Ariosto, and that at 
Venice he heard the gondoliers sing verses of Tasso. 
But for Tasso and Ariosto he cared far less than 
for Valerius Flaccus and Sidonius Apollinaris. 2 The 
gentle flow of the Ticin 3 brings a line of Silius 4 to 

1 Maeaulay here gives a list of the chief writers of Italy be- 
tween the time of the author of the Divine Comedy (1265-1321) 
and the age of the Medici at Florence. Petrarch (1301-1374) 
and Boccaccio (1313-1375) are well known. Count Boiardo 
(1431-1492) wrote the Orlando Innamorato, and Francesco Berni 
(born about 1490) remodeled this poem and wrote sonnets and 
Latin verses in a style greatly admired. Lorenzo the Magnifi- 
cent (1448-1492) was the most illustrious of his family, and was 
a poet as well as a statesman ; Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) 
was a great historian and publicist whose name is associated, 
perhaps unjustly, with unprincipled statesmanship. For all 
these see at least Hallman and Sismondi, and read Macaulay's 
essays on Milton and Machiavelli, Dante, and Petrarch. 

2 Obscure Roman poets ; the first wrote an unfinished poem on 
the Argonauts about the time of Vespasian (first century, a. d.), 
the second was a Christian writer of the fifth century who left 
some letters and panegyrical poems. 

3 The Ticino (Ticinus), a river of Northern Italy famous for 
one of Hannibal's battles. 

4 See page 101, note 2. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 143 

his mind. The sulphurous steam of Albula suggests 
to him several passages of Martial. 1 But he has not 
a word to say of the illustrious dead of Santa Croce ; 2 
he crosses the wood of Ravenna without recollecting 
the Spectre Huntsman, 3 and wanders up and down 
Rimini without one thought of Francesca. 4 At Paris 
he had eagerly sought an introduction to Boileau ; but 
he seems not to have been at all aware that at Flor- 
ence he was in the vicinity of a poet with whom 
Boileau could not sustain a comparison, — of the great- 
est lyric poet of modern times, Vincenzio Filicaja. 5 
This is the more remarkable because Filicaja was 
the favorite poet of the accomplished Somers, under 
whose protection Addison traveled, and to whom the 
account of the travels is dedicated. The truth is, 
that Addison knew little, and cared less, about the 
literature of modern Italy. His favorite models were 
Latin. His favorite critics were French. Half the 
Tuscan poetry that he had read seemed to him mon- 
strous, and the other half tawdry. 

His travels were followed by the lively opera of 
"Rosamond." This piece was ill set to music, and 
therefore failed on the stage ; but it completely suc- 
ceeded in print, and is indeed excellent in its kind. 
The smoothness with which the verses glide, and the 
elasticity with which they bound, is, to our ears at 

1 Marcus Valerius Martialis (died about A. r>. 104, at the age 
of seventy-five), the famous epigrammatist. 
- The Westminster Abbey of Florence. 

3 See Boccaccio's Decameron, Day 5, Nov. 8. The huntsman 
was a knight who had killed himself for love of a cruel lady, 
whom afterwards he pursued with hounds. 

4 See Dante's Inferno (end of canto v.) for the episode of 
Francesca da Rimini, one of the most pathetic in all literature. 

6 See the essay on Milton, page 43, text and note 3. 



144 MACAULAY. 

least, very pleasing. We are inclined to think that 
if Addison had left heroic couplets to Pope and 
blank verse to Eowe, 1 and had employed himself in 
writing airy and spirited songs, his reputation as a 
poet would have stood far higher than it now does. 
Some years after his death, " Rosamond " was set to 
new music by Dr. .Arne, 2 and was performed with 
complete success. Several passages long retained 
their popularity, and were daily sung, during the 
latter part of the reign of George II., at all the 
harpsichords in England. 3 

While Addison thus amused himself, his prospects 
and the prospects of his party were constantly becom- 
ing brighter and brighter. In the spring of 1705, 
the ministers were freed from the restraint imposed 
by a House of Commons in which Tories of the most 
perverse class had the ascendency. The elections 
were favorable to the Whigs. The coalition which 
had been tacitly .and gradually formed was now openly 
avowed. The Great Seal 4 was given to Cowper. 
Somers and Halifax were sworn of the Council. Hal- 
ifax was sent in the following year to carry the deco- 

1 Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718), a dramatist now little read, and 
an early editor of Shakespeare. 

2 Dr. Thomas Augustine Arne (1710-1778). He wrote the 
music to Rosamond when he was only eighteen. He also fur- 
nished music for Comus. 

3 Mr. Gosse calls Rosamond a " graceful " opera, but pro- 
ceeds to remark that " Addison was totally without lyric gift." 
The latter judgment, however difficult to square with the for- 
mer, is undoubtedly correct, and should be received in place of 
Macaulay's praise, which was due rather to his love for Addison 
than to his better critical faculty. 

4 The great seal is attached to important documents of state 
and is kept by the Lord Chancellor, or by the Lord Keeper dur- 
ing a vacancy in the chancellorship. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 145 

rations of the order of the garter to the Electoral 
Prince of Hanover, 1 and was accompanied on this 
honorable mission by Addison, who had just been 
made undersecretary of state. The secretary of state 
under whom Addison first served was Sir Charles 
Hedges, 2 a Tory; but Hedges was soon dismissed to 
make room for the most vehement of Whigs, Charles, 
Earl of Sunderland. In every department of the 
state, indeed, the High Churchmen were compelled 
to give place to their opponents. At the close of 
1707, the Tories who still remained in office strove to 
rally, with Harley 3 at their head; but the attempt, 
though favored by the Queen, — who had always been 
a Tory at heart, and who had now quarreled with the 
Duchess of Marlborough, 4 — was unsuccessful. The 
time.was not yet. The captain-general was at the 
height of popularity and glory. The Low Church 
party had a majority in Parliament. The country 
squires and rectors, though occasionally uttering a 
savage growl, were for the most part in a state of 
torpor, which lasted till they were roused into activ- 
ity, and indeed into madness, by the prosecution of 
Sacheverell. 5 Harley and his adherents were com- 
pelled to retire. The victory of the Whigs was com- 
plete. At the general election of 1708, their strength 
in the House of Commons became irresistible; and 

1 Afterwards George I. 

2 Died 1714. 

3 Robert Harley (1661-1724), Earl of Oxford. See the essay 
on Johnson, page 15, note 1. 

4 The notorious Sarah Jennings (1660-1744), whose control 
over her husband, and, for a time, the queen, is familiar to all 
students of the period. 

5 See the essay on Johnson, page 16, note 4. The famous Tory 
preacher had been a college-mate of Addison's. 



146 MACAULAY. 

before the end of that year Somers was made lord 
president of the Council, and Wharton 1 lord lieuten- 
ant of Ireland. 

Addison sat for Malmesbury 2 in the House of 
Commons which was elected in 1708, but the House 
of Commons was not the field for him. The bashful- 
ness of his nature made his wit and eloquence useless 
in debate. He once rose, but could not overcome 
his diffidence, and ever after remained silent. No- 
body can think it strange that a great writer should 
fail as a speaker; but many probably will think it 
strange that Addison's failure as a speaker should 
have had no unfavorable effect on his success as a 
politician. In our time, a man of high rank and 
great fortune might, though speaking very little and 
very ill, hold a considerable post; but it would now 
be inconceivable that a mere adventurer — a man 
who, when out of office, must live by his pen — 
should in a few years become successively undersecre- 
tary of state, chief secretary for Ireland, and secre- 
tary of state, without some oratorical talent. Addi- 
son, without high birth and with little property, rose 
to a post which dukes, the heads of the great houses 
of Talbot, Russell, and Ben thick, 3 have thought it an 
honor to fill. Without opening his lips in debate, 
he rose to a post the highest that Chatham or Fox 
ever reached; and this he did before he had been 
nine years in Parliament. We must look for the 
explanation of this seeming miracle to the peculiar 

1 Thomas, Marquis of Wharton (1640-1715), one of the ablest 
Whigs. 

2 A market town of Wilts, in which county he had been born. 

3 The family names of the Dukes of Shrewsbury, Bedford, and 
Portland. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 147 

circumstances in which that generation was placed. 
During the interval which elapsed between the time 
when the censorship of the press ceased, and the time 
when parliamentary proceedings began to be freely 
reported, literary talents were, to a public man, of 
much more importance, and oratorical talents of much 
less importance, than in our time. At present, the 
best way of giving rapid and wide publicity to a fact 
or an argument is to introduce that fact or argu- 
ment into a speech made in Parliament. If a politi- 
cal tract were to appear superior to "The Conduct of 
the Allies," 1 or to the best numbers of "The Free- 
holder," the circulation of such a tract would be lan- 
guid indeed, when compared with the circulation of 
every remarkable word uttered in the deliberations 
of the Legislature. A speech made in the House of 
Commons at four in the morning is on thirty thou- 
sand tables before ten. A speech made on the Mon- 
day is read on the Wednesday by multitudes in An- 
trim and Aberdeenshire. 2 The orator, by the help 
of the shorthand writer, has to a great extent super- 
seded the pamphleteer. It was not so in the reign of 
Anne. The best speech could then produce no effect 
except on those who heard it. It was only by means 
of the press that the opinion of the public without 
doors could be influenced; and the opinion of the 
public without doors could not but be of the highest 
importance in a country governed by parliaments, 
and indeed at that time governed by triennial parlia- 
ments. The pen was therefore a more formidable 

1 By Dean Swift (1711). 

2 Counties in northern Ireland and Scotland ; i. e., to the far- 
thest parts of the empire. Note how fond Maeaulay is of the 
concrete rather than the general statement. 



148 MACAULAY. 

political engine than the tongue. Mr. Pitt and Mr. 
Fox contended only in Parliament. But Walpole 
and Pulteney, 1 the Pitt and Fox of an earlier period, 
had not done half of what was necessaly when they 
sat down amidst the acclamations of the House of 
Commons. They had still to plead their cause before 
the country, and this they could do only by means of 
the press. Their works are now forgotten ; but it is 
certain that there were in Grub Street 2 few more 
assiduous scribblers of Thoughts, Letters, Answers, 
Remarks, than these two great chiefs of parties. 
Pulteney, when leader of the Opposition, and pos- 
sessed of thirty thousand a year, edited "The Crafts- 
man." 3 Walpole, though not a man of literary 
habits, was the author of at least ten pamphlets, and 
retouched and corrected many more. These facts 
sufficiently show of how great importance literary 
assistance then was to the contending- parties. St. 
John 4 was certainly, in Anne's reign, the best Tory 
speaker ; Cowper was probably the best Whig speaker : 
but it may well be doubted whether St. John did so 
much for the Tories as Swift, and whether Cowper 
did so much for the Whigs as Addison. When these 
things are duly considered, it will not be thought 
strange that Addison should have climbed higher in 

1 See the essay on Milton, page 11, note 3, and the essay on 
Johnson, page 16, note 1. 

2 See the essay on Johnson, page 22, note 1. 

3 This paper, which embarrassed Walpole, began on Decem- 
ber 5, 1726, and ran for a considerable time, filling fourteen 
volumes in its collected form. 

4 Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751), one of 
the most noted and least trustworthy politicians of the time, also 
a writer of once great but now much diminished repute. Pope 
inscribed to him the Essay on Man. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 149 

the state than any other Englishman has ever, by 
means merely of literary talents, been able to climb. 
Swift would in all probability have climbed as high 
if he had not been encumbered by his cassock and his 
pudding sleeves. 1 As far as the homage of the great 
went, Swift had as much of it as if he had been lord 
treasurer. 

To the influence which Addison derived from his 
literary talents was added all the influence which 
arises from character. The world, always ready to 
think the worst of needy political adventurers, was 
forced to make one exception. Restlessness, violence, 
audacity, laxity of principle, are the vices ordinarily 
attributed to that class of men. But faction itself 
could not deny that Addison had, through all changes 
of fortune, been strictly faithful to his early opinions 
and to his early friends; that his integrity was with- 
out stain ; that his whole deportment indicated a fine 
sense of the becoming; that, in the utmost heat of 
controversy, his zeal was tempered by a regard for 
truth, humanity, and social decorum ; that no outrage 
could ever provoke him to retaliation unworthy of 
a Christian and a gentleman ; and that his only faults 
were a too sensitive delicacy and a modesty which 
amounted to bashfulness. 

lie was undoubtedly one of the most popular men 
of his time; and much of his popularity he owed, we 
believe, to that very timidity which his friends la- 
mented. That timidity often prevented him from 
exhibiting his talents to the best advantage, but it 
propitiated Nemesis. It averted that envy which 
would otherwise have been excited by fame so splen- 

1 " Pudding sleeves " refers to the full sleeves of the black 
gowns worn by the clergy. 



150 MACAU LAY. 

did, and by so rapid an elevation. No man is so 
great a favorite with the public as he who is at once 
an object of admiration, of respect, and of pity; and 
such were the feelings which Addison inspired. 
Those who enjoyed the privilege of hearing his famil- 
iar conversation declared with one voice that it was 
superior even to his writings. The brilliant Mary 
Montagu 1 said that she had known all the wits, and 
that Addison was the best company in the world. 
The malignant Pope was forced to own that there 
was a charm in Addison's talk which could be found 
nowhere else. Swift, when burning with animosity 
against the Whigs, could not but confess to Stella 2 
that, after all, he had never known any associate 
so agreeable as Addison. Steele, an excellent judge 
of lively conversation, said that the conversation of 
Addison was at once the most polite and the most 
mirthful that could be imagined; that it was Ter- 
ence and Catullus in one, heightened by an exquisite 
something which was neither Terence nor Catullus, 
but Addison alone. Young, an excellent judge of 
serious conversation, said that when Addison was at 
his ease he went on in a noble strain of thought and 
language, so as to chain the attention of every hearer. 
Nor were Addison's great colloquial powers more 
admirable than the courtesy and softness of heart 
which appeared in his conversation. At the same 
time, it would be too much to say that he was wholly 
devoid of the malice which is, perhaps, inseparable 
from a keen sense of the ludicrous. He had one 

1 See page 201; also the essay on Johnson, page 31, note 2. 

2 Swift's name for Miss Esther Johnson (1681-1728), with 
whom he corresponded for a long while and whom he finally 
married. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 151 

habit which both Swift and Stella applauded, and 
which we hardly know how to blame. If his first 
attempts to set a presuming dunce right were ill re- 
ceived, he changed his tone, "assented with civil 
leer," 1 and lured the flattered coxcomb deeper and 
deeper into absurdity. That such was his practice we 
should, we think, have guessed from his works. "The 
Tatler's "criticisms on Mr. Softly 's sonnet, and "The 
Spectator's" dialogue with the politician who is so 
zealous for the honor of Lady Q — p — t — s, are excel- 
lent specimens of this innocent mischief. 

Such were Addison's talents for conversation. But 
his rare gifts were not exhibited to crowds or to 
strangers. As soon as he entered a large company, 
as soon as he saw an unknown face, his lips were 
sealed, and his manners became constrained. None 
who met him only in great assemblies would have 
been able to believe that he was the same man who 
had often kept a few friends listening and laughing 
round a table from the time when the play ended till 
the clock of St. Paul's in Covent Garden struck four. 
Yet, even at such a table, he was not seen to the best 
advantage. To enjoy his conversation in the highest 
perfection, it was necessary to be alone with him, 
and to hear him, in his own phrase, think aloud. 
"There is no such thing," he used to say, "as real 
conversation but between two persons." 

This timidity — a timidity surely neither ungrace- 
ful nor unamiable — led Addison into the two most 
serious faults which can with justice be imputed to 
him. He found that wine broke the spell which lay 
on his fine intellect, and was therefore too easily se- 
duced into convivial excess. Such excess was in that 
1 From Pope's lines on Addison quoted later. 



152 M AC AULA Y. 

age regarded, even by grave men, as the most venial 
of all peccadillos, and was so far from being a mark 
of ill-breeding that it was almost essential to the char- 
acter of a fine gentleman. But the smallest speck is 
seen on a white ground, and almost all the biographers 
of Addison have said something about this failing. 
Of any other statesman or writer of Queen Anne's 
reign, we should no more think of saying that he 
sometimes took too much wine than that he wore a 
long wig and a sword. 

To the excessive modesty of Addison's nature we 
must ascribe another fault, which generally arises 
from a very different cause. He became a little too 
fond of seeing himself surrounded by a small circle of 
admirers to whom he was as a king, or rather as a 
god. All these men were far inferior to him in abil- 
ity, and some of them had very serious faults. Nor 
did those faults escape his observation; for, if ever 
there was an eye which saw through and through 
men, it was the eye of Addison. But, with the keen- 
est observation and the finest sense of the ridiculous, 
he had a large charity. The feeling with which he 
looked on most of his humble companions was one of 
benevolence, slightly tinctured with contempt. He 
was at perfect ease in their company ; he was grateful 
for their devoted attachment; and he loaded them 
with benefits. Their veneration for him appears to 
have exceeded that with which Johnson was regarded 
by Boswell, 1 or Warburton by Hurd. 2 It was not in 

1 James Boswell (1740-1795). See Macaulay's essays on 
Johnson and on Eoswell's Life of Johnson. 

2 Richard Hard (1720-1808) was a friend and disciple of 
Warhnrton (see the essay on Johnson, page 22, note 3), who was 
something of a scholar, became Bishop of Worcester, and de- 
clined to be Archbishop of Canterbury. He edited Addison. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 153 

the power of adulation to turn such a head, or de- 
prave such a heart, as Addison's; but it must in can- 
dor be admitted that he contracted some of the faults 
which can scarcely be avoided by any person who is 
so unfortunate as to be the oracle of a small literary 
coterie. 

One member of this little society was Eustace 
Budgell, 1 a young templar of some literature, 2 and 
a distant relation of Addison. There was at this 
time no stain on the character of Budgell; and it 
is not improbable that his career would have been 
prosperous and honorable if the life of his cousin had 
been prolonged. But when the master was laid in 
the grave, the disciple broke loose from all restraint, 
descended rapidly from one degree of vice and misery 
to another, ruined his fortune by follies, attempted 
to repair it by crimes, and at length closed a wicked 
and unhappy life by self-murder. Yet, to the last, 
the wretched man — gambler, lampooner, cheat, 
forger, as he was — retained his affection and venera- 
tion for Addison, and recorded those feelings in the 
last lines which he traced before he hid himself from 
infamy under London Bridge. 

Another of Addison's favorite companions was Am- 
brose Philips, a good Whig and a middling poet, 
who had the honor of bringing into fashion a species 
of composition which has been called, after his name, 
Namby Pamby. But the most remarkable members 
of the little senate, as Pope long afterwards called it, 
were Richard Steele and Thomas Tickell. 3 

1 1685-1 73G. 

2 That is, a lawyer of some literary attainments. 

3 1686-1740. He edited Addison and wrote an elegy on his 
death which is noticed farther on. The rest of his poetry is 
worth little. 



154 MACAULAY. 

Steele had known Addison from childhood. They 
had been together at the Charter House and at Ox- 
ford; but circumstances had then, for a time, sepa- 
rated them widely. Steele had left college without 
taking a degree, had been disinherited by a rich rela- 
tion, had led a vagrant life, had served in the army, 
had tried to find the philosopher's stone, and had 
written a religious treatise and several comedies. He 
was one of those people whom it is impossible either 
to hate or to respect. His temper was sweet, his 
affections warm, his spirits lively, his passions strong, 
and his principles weak. His life was spent in sin- 
ning and repenting; in inculcating what was right, 
and doing what was wrong. In speculation he was 
a man of piety and honor; in practice he was much 
of the rake and a little of the swindler. He was, 
however, so good-natured that it was not easy to be 
seriously angry with him, and that even rigid moral- 
ists felt more inclined to pity than to blame him 
when he diced himself into a sponging-house or drank 
himself into a fever. Addison regarded Steele with 
kindness not unmingled with scorn; tried, with little 
success, to keep him out of scrapes; introduced him 
to the great ; procured a good place for him ; corrected 
his plays; and, though by no means rich, lent him 
large sums of money. One of these loans appears, 
from a letter dated in August, 1708, to have amounted 
to a thousand pounds. These pecuniary transactions 
probably led to frequent bickerings. It is said that, 
on one occasion, Steele's negligence or dishonesty 
provoked Addison to repay himself by the help of a 
bailiff. We cannot join with Miss Aikin in reject- 
ing this story. Johnson heard it from Savage, 1 who 

1 For this minor poet, see the essay on Johnson, page 58, text 
and note. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 155 

Heard it from Steele. Few private transactions which 
took place a hundred, and twenty years ago are proved 
by stronger evidence than this. 1 But we can by no 
means agree with those who condemn Addison's se- 
verity. The most amiable of mankind may well be 
moved to indignation when what he has earned hardly, 
and lent with great inconvenience to himself, for the 
purpose of relieving a friend in distress, is squandered 
with insane profusion. We will illustrate our mean- 
ing by an example which is not the less striking be- 
cause it is taken from fiction. Dr. Harrison, in 
Fielding's 2 "Amelia," is represented as the most be- 
nevolent of human beings; yet he takes in execu- 
tion, not only the goods, but the person, of his friend 
Booth. Dr. Harrison resorts to this strong measure 
because he has been informed that Booth, while plead- 
ing poverty as an excuse for not paying just debts, 
has been buying fine jewelry and setting up a coach. 
No person who is well acquainted with Steele's life 
and correspondence can doubt that he behaved quite 
as ill to Addison as Booth was accused of behaving to 
Dr. Harrison. The real history, we have little doubt, 
was something like this: a letter comes to Addison, 
imploring help in pathetic terms, and promising re- 
formation and speedy repayment. Poor Dick declares 
that he has not an inch of candle, or a bushel of coals, 
or credit with the butcher for a shoulder of mutton. 
Addison is moved. He determines to deny himself 
some medals which are wanting to his series of the 
Twelve Caesars, 3 to put off buying the new edition 

1 This whole story is involved in much doubt. 

2 Henry Fielding (1707-1754), author of Tom Jones. See 
the essay on Johnson, page 12, note 4. 

'• That is, the Roman emperors, beginning with Caesar and 
finding with Domitian (9C A. D.). 



156 MA CAUL AY. 

of Bayle's * Dictionary, and to we#r his old sword 
and buckles another year; in this way he manages 
to send a hundred pounds to his friend. The next 
day he calls on Steele, and finds scores of gentlemen 
and ladies assembled. The fiddles are playing. The 
table is groaning under Champagne, Burgundy, and 
pyramids of sweetmeats. Is it strange that a man 
whose kindness is thus abused should send sheriff's 
officers to reclaim what is due to him? 

Tickell was a young man, fresh from Oxford, who 
had introduced himself to public notice by writing 
a most ingenious and graceful little poem in praise 
of the opera of "Rosamond." He deserved, and at 
length attained, the first place in Addison's friend- 
ship. For a time Steele and Tickell were on good 
terms; but they loved Addison too much to love each 
other, and at length became as bitter enemies as the 
rival bulls in Virgil. 2 

At the close of 1708 Wharton became lord lieuten- 
ant of Ireland, and appointed Addison chief secre- 
tary. Addison was consequently under the necessity 
of quitting London for Dublin. Besides the chief 
secretaryship, which was then worth about two thou- 
sand pounds a year, he obtained a patent appointing 
him keeper of the Irish Records for life, with a salary 
of three or four hundred a year. Budgell accompa- 
nied his cousin in the capacity of private secretary. 

Wharton and Addison had nothing in common but 
Whiggism. The lord lieutenant was not only licen- 

1 Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), a celebrated French critic and 
freethinker, best known for his Critical and Historical Diction- 
ary, which is hardly a dictionary at all, but a storehouse of mis- 
cellaneous information. Addison spent much time over it. 

2 Georgics, iii. 220-225. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 157 

tious and corrupt, but was distinguished from other 
libertines and jobbers by a callous impudence which 
presented the strongest contrast to the secretary's 
gentleness and delicacy. Many parts of the Irish 
administration at this time appear to have deserved 
serious blame, but against Addison there was not a 
murmur. He long afterwards asserted, what all the 
evidence which we have ever seen tends to prove, that 
his diligence and integrity gained the friendship of all 
the most considerable persons in Ireland. 

The parliamentary career of Addison in Ireland 
has, we think, wholly escaped the notice of all his 
biographers. He was elected member for the borough 
of Cavan in the summer of 1709, and in the journals 
of two sessions his name frequently occurs. Some of 
the entries appear to indicate that he so far overcame 
his timidity as to make speeches. Nor is this by any 
means improbable, for the Irish House of Commons 
was a far less formidable audience than the English 
House, and many tongues which were tied by fear in 
the greater assembly became fluent in the smaller. 
Gerard Hamilton, 1 for example, who, from fear of 
losing the fame gained by his single speech, sat mute 
at Westminster during forty years, spoke with great 
effect at Dublin when he was secretary to Lord Hali- 
fax. 2 

While Addison was in Ireland, an event occurred 
to which he owes his high and permanent rank among 
British writers. As yet his fame rested on perfor- 

i William Gerard Hamilton (1729-1796), nicknamed " Single- 
Speech Hamilton," on account of his brilliant speech of Novem- 
ber 13, 1755, after which he kept silent except for one occasion, 
although he sat in every Parliament till his death. 

2 George Montagu Dunk, Earl of Halifax (1716-1771), Lord 
Lieutenant of Ireland in 1761. 



158 MAC AULA Y. 

matices which, though highly respectable, were not 
built for duration, and which would, if he had pro- 
duced nothing else, have now been almost forgotten, 
— on some excellent Latin verses, on some English 
verses which occasionally rose above mediocrity, and 
on a book of travels, agreeably written, but not in- 
dicating any extraordinary powers of mind. These 
works showed him to be a man of taste, sense, and 
learning. The time had come when he was to prove 
himself a man of genius, and to enrich our literature 
with compositions which will live as long as the Eng- 
lish language. 

In the spring of 1709 Steele formed a literary pro- 
ject, 1 of which he was far indeed from foreseeing the 
consequences. Periodical papers had during many 
years been published in London. Most of these were 
political; but in some of them questions of morality, 
taste, and love casuistry had been discussed. The 
literary merit of these works was small indeed, and 
even their names are now known only to the curious. 

Steele had been appointed gazetteer 2 by Sunder- 
land, at the request, it is said, of Addison, and thus 
had access to foreign intelligence earlier and more 
authentic than was in those times within the reach of 
an ordinary news-writer. 3 This circumstance seems 
to have suggested to him the scheme of publishing a 
periodical paper on a new plan. It was to appear on 
the clays on which the post left London for the coun- 
try, which were, in that generation, the Tuesdays, 

1 The Tatler ran from April 12, 1709, to January 2, 1710-11. 

2 That is, publisher of news authorized by the government. 

3 See, for an account of these men, who furnished news to the 
remote districts, Macaulay's History, chap, iii., and The Tatler, 
No. 18. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 159 

Thursdays, and Saturdays. It was to contain the 
foreign news, accounts of theatrical representations, 
and the literary gossip of Will's and of the Grecian. 1 
It was also to contain remarks on the fashionable 
topics of the day, compliments to beauties, pasqui- 
nades 2 on noted sharpers, and criticisms on popular 
preachers. The aim of Steele does not appear to have 
been at first higher than this. He was not ill-qualified 
to conduct the work which he had planned. His public 
intelligence he drew from the best sources. He knew 
the town, and had paid dear for his knowledge. He 
had read much more than the dissipated men of that 
time were in the habit of reading. He was a rake 
among scholars and a scholar among rakes. His 
style was easy and not incorrect, and, though his wit 
and humor were of no high order, his gay animal 
spirits imparted to his compositions an air of vivacity 
which ordinary readers could hardly distinguish from 
comic genius. His writings have been well compared 
to those light wines which, though deficient in body 
and flavor, are yet a pleasant small drink if not kept 
too long or carried too far. 

Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., astrologer, was an imagi- 
nary person, almost as well known in that age as 
Mr. Paul Pry 3 or Mr. Samuel Pickwick in ours. 
Swift had assumed the name of Bickerstaff in a satiri- 
cal pamphlet against Partridge, 4 the maker of alma- 

1 Well-known coffee-houses of the period. 

2 That is, lampoons, so called from Pasquino, an Italian cob- 
bler of caustic wit (fifteenth century). 

3 A character giving' the name to a well-known comedy of 
John Poole's (about 1840). 

4 John Partridge (died 1715). See Gosse. Swift published 
his Predictions for the Year 1708 as a joke on Partridge's vague 
prognostications, and among other things prophesied that Par- 



160 MACAULAY. 

nacs. Partridge had been fool enough to publish a 
furious reply. Biekerstaff had rejoined in a second 
pamphlet, still more diverting than the first. All the 
wits had combined to keep up the joke, and the town 
was long in convulsions of laughter. Steele deter- 
mined to employ the name which this controversy had 
made popular; and in 1709 it was announced that 
Isaac Biekerstaff, Esq., astrologer, was about to pub- 
lish a paper called "The Tatler." 

Addison had not been consulted aboxit this scheme ; 
but, as soon as he heard of it, he determined to give 
his assistance. The effect of that assistance cannot 
be better described than in Steele's own words. "I 
fared," he said, "like a distressed prince who calls 
in a powerful neighbor to his aid. I was undone 
by my auxiliary. When I had once called him in, I 
could not subsist without dependence on him." "The 
paper," he says elsewdiere, "was advanced indeed. 
It was raised to a greater thing than I intended it." 

It is probable that Addison, when he sent across 
St. George's Channel his first contributions to "The 
Tatler," had no notion of the extent and variety of 
his own powers. He was the possessor of a vast 
mine, rich with a hundred ores; but he had been 
acquainted only with the least precious part of his 
treasures, and had hitherto contented himself with 
producing sometimes copper and sometimes lead, in- 
termingled with a little silver. All at once, and by 
mere accident, he had lighted on an inexhaustible 
vein of the finest gold. 

tridge would die at eleven o'clock on the night of March 29th. 
Immediately after this date he issued another pamphlet giving 
an Account of Partridge's Death. The poor fellow expostulated, 
but was overwhelmed with replies. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 161 

The mere choice and arrangement of his words 
would have sufficed to make his essays classical; for 
never — not even by Dryden, not even by Temple 1 — 
had the English language been written with such 
sweetness, grace, and facility. But this was the 
smallest part of Addison's praise. Had he clothed 
his thoughts in the half French style of Horace Wal- 
pole, 2 or in the half Latin style of Dr. Johnson, or 
in the half German jargon of the present day, 3 his 
genius would have triumphed over all faults of man- 
ner. As a moral satirist he stands unrivaled. If 
ever the best "Tatlers" and "Spectators" were 
equaled in their own kind, we should be inclined to 
guess that it must have been by the lost comedies of 
Menander. 4 

In wit, properly so called, Addison was not inferior 
to Cowley 5 or Butler. No single ode of Cowley 
contains so many happy analogies as are crowded 
into the lines to Sir Godfrey Kneller; 7 and we would 
undertake to collect from the "Spectators" as great a 
number of ingenious illustrations as can be found 
in "Hudibras." The still higher faculty of inven- 

1 Sir William Temple (1628-1609), a well-known diplomatist 
and essayist, noted for his style. See Macanlay's essay on him. 

2 Earl of Orford (1717-1797), son of Sir Robert, famous as a 
dilettante and for his Letters. 

8 A reference to Carlyle. 

4 The Greek comic poet (342-291 b. c. circa). Only frag- 
ments of his numerous comedies are extant, but they had a great 
reputation among the ancients. 

5 See the essay on Milton, page 6, note 3. 

Samuel Butler (1612-1680), the famous author of Hudibras. 
See Gosse and Ward's English Poets. 

7 The well-known portrait painter (1648-1723). The lines 
by Addison referred to are felicitous, but not witli the curious, 
unexpected felicity of Cowley at his best. 



162 MAC AULA Y. 

tion Addison possessed in still larger measure. The 
numerous fictions, generally original, often wild and 
grotesque, but always singularly graceful and happy, 
which are found in his essays, fully entitle him to 
the rank of a great poet, — a rank to which his metri- 
cal compositions give him no claim. As an observer 
of life, of manners, of all the shades of human char- 
acter, he stands in the first class; and what he ob- 
served he had the art of communicating in two widely 
different ways. He could describe virtues, vices, 
habits, whims, as well as Clarendon. 1 But he could 
do something better: he could call human beings into 
existence, and make them exhibit themselves. If we 
wish to find anything more vivid than Addison's best 
portraits, we must go either to Shakespeare or to 
Cervantes. 

But what shall we say of Addison's humor, of his 
sense of the ludicrous, of his power of awakening that 
sense in others, and of drawing mirth from incidents 
which occur every day, and from little peculiarities 
of temper and manner such as may be found in every 
man? We feel the charm; we give ourselves up to 
it: but we strive in vain to analyze it. 

Perhaps the best way of describing Addison's pecu- 
liar pleasantry is to compare it with the pleasantry of 
some other great satirists. The three most eminent 
masters of the art of ridicule during the eighteenth 
century were, we conceive, Addison, Swift, and Vol- 
taire. Which of the three had the greatest power 
of moving laughter may be questioned; but each of 
them, within his own domain, was supreme. 

1 Clarendon's History of the Rebellion is noted for its sketches 
of character. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 163 

Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merriment 
is without disguise or restraint. He gambols ; he 
grins; he shakes the sides; he points the finger; he 
turns up the nose; he shoots out the tongue. 1 The 
manner of Swift is the very opposite to this. He 
moves laughter, but never joins in it. He appears in 
his works such as he appeared in society. All the 
company are convulsed with merriment; while the 
Dean, the author of all the mirth, preserves an invin- 
cible gravity and even sourness of aspect, and gives 
utterance to the most eccentric and ludicrous fan- 
cies with the air of a man reading the commination 
service. 2 

The manner of Addison is as remote from that of 
Swift as from that of Voltaire. He neither laughs 
out like the French wit, nor, like the Irish wit, 
throws a double portion of severity into his counte- 
nance while laughing inwardly, but preserves a look 
peculiarly his own, — a look of demure serenity, dis- 
turbed only by an arch sparkle of the eye, an almost 
imperceptible elevation of the brow, an almost imper- 
ceptible curl of the lip. His tone is never that either 
of a Jack Pudding or of a Cynic. 3 It is that of a 
gentleman in whom the quickest sense of the ridicu- 
lous is constantly tempered by good-nature and good- 
breeding. 

We own that the humor of Addison is, in our opin- 
ion, of more delicious flavor than the humor of either 

1 Probably an example of Macaulay's characteristic exaggera- 
tion. 

2 A service of the English Church, read on Ash Wednesday, 
reciting God's anger against sinners. 

3 That is, of a merry-andrew or buffoon, or of a snarling phi- 
losopher like Diogenes. 



164 MACAULAY. 

Swift or Voltaire. Thus much, at least, is certain, 
that both Swift and Voltaire have been successfully 
mimicked, and that no man has yet been able to 
mimic Addison. The letter of the Abbe Coyer 1 to 
Pansophe is Voltaire all over, and imposed, during a 
long time, on the Academicians of Paris. There are 
passages in Arbuthnot's 2 satirical works which we, 
at least, cannot distinguish from Swift's best wilt- 
ing. But of the many eminent men who have made 
Addison their model, though several have copied 
his mere diction with happy effect, none has been 
able to catch the tone of his pleasantry. In " The 
World," in "The Connoisseur," in "The Mirror," in 
"The Lounger," 3 there are numerous papers written 
in obvious imitation of his "Tatlers" and "Specta- 
tors." Most of those papers have some merit; many 
are very lively and amusing ; but there is not a single 
one which could be passed off as- Addison's on a critic 
of the smallest perspicacity. 

But that which chiefly distinguishes Addison from 
Swift, from Voltaire, from almost all the other great 
masters of ridicule, is the grace, the nobleness, the 

1 Gabriel Francois Coyer (died in 1782, very old), a Jesuit 
who resigned from his order and devoted himself to letters. 
He translated Blackstone, and wrote Bagatelles Morales. 

2 Dr. John Arbuthnot (1G67-1735), the friend of Pope and 
Swift, and a noted wit. He wrote most, if not all, of the Me- 
moirs of Martinus Scriblerus, which Sterne's Tristram Shandy 
has now eclipsed, and a History of John Bull, besides disserta- 
tions on medals, etc., and some medical works. 

3 Papers in imitation of The Spectator. The World (1753-56) 
was edited by the poet Edward Moore ; The Connoisseur (1754- 
50) was edited by George Colman and Bennet Thornton ; The 
Mirror (1779-80) and The Lounger (1785-87) were Edinburgh 
journals, to which Henry Mackenzie was the chief contributor. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 165 

moral purity, which we find even in his merriment. 
Severity, gradually hardening and darkening into 
misanthropy, characterizes the works of Swift. The 
nature of Voltaire was, indeed, not inhuman; but he 
venerated nothing. Neither in the masterpieces of 
art nor in the purest examples of virtue, neither in 
the Great First Cause nor in the awful enigma of the 
grave, could he see anything but subjects for droll- 
ery. 1 The more solemn and august the theme, the 
more monkey -like was his grimacing and chattering. 
The mirth of Swift is the mirth of Mephistopheles ; 2 
the mirth of Voltaire is the mirth of Puck. 3 If, as 
Soame Jenyns 4 oddly imagined, a portion of the 
happiness of seraphim and just men made perfect be 
derived from an exquisite perception of the ludicrous, 
their mirth must surely be none other than the mirth 
of Addison, — a mirth consistent with tender compas- 
sion for all that is frail, and with profound reverence 
for all that is sublime. Nothing great, nothing ami- 
able, no moral duty, no doctrine of natural or re- 
vealed religion, has ever been associated by Addison 
with any degrading idea. His humanity is without a 
parallel in literary history. The highest proof of vir- 
tue is to possess boundless power without abusing it. 
No kind of power is more formidable than the power 
of making men ridiculous, and that power Addison 
possessed in boundless measure. How grossly that 
power was abused by Swift and by Voltaire is well 
known. But of Addison it may be confidently af- 
firmed that he has blackened no man's character; 

1 This statement is more than questionable. 

2 The cynical demon of Goethe's Faust. 

3 The aerial spirit of A Midsummer Night's Dream, 
* See the essay on Johnson, page 34, note '_'. 



166 MAC A UL AY. 

nay, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to 
find in all the volumes which he has left us a single 
taunt which can be called ungenerous or unkind. 
Yet he had detractors, whose malignity might have 
seemed to justify as terrible a revenge as that which 
men not superior to him in genius wreaked on Bettes- 
worth 1 and on Franc de Pompignan. 2 He was a 
politician; he was the best writer of his party; he 
lived in times of fierce excitement, — in times when 
persons of high character and station stooped to scur- 
rility such as is now practiced only by the basest of 
mankind: yet no provocation and no example could 
induce him to return railing for railing. 

Of the service which his essays rendered to moral- 
ity it is difficult to speak too highly. It is true that, 
when "The Tatler " appeared, that age of outrageous 
profaneness and licentiousness which followed the 
Restoration had passed away. Jeremy Collier 3 had 
shamed the theatres into something which, compared 
with the excesses of Etherege and Wycherley, 4 might 
be called decency; yet there still lingered in the pub- 
lic mind a pernicious notion that there was some con- 

1 A Dublin lawyer satirized by Swift. 

2 Jean Jacques le Franc, Marquis of Pompignan (1709-1784), 
author of the once famous tragedy of Dido, who on his election 
to the French Academy in 1760 delivered a discourse defending 
Christianity, which was satirized by Voltaire and others. 

3 1650-1726. A nonjuring preacher (i. e., one who refused to 
swear allegiance to William and Mary), who attacked the vices 
of the stage in a book which Dryden, one of the offending dra- 
matists, had to admit to be fully founded on facts. 

4 Sir George Etherege (1636-1694) and William Wycherley 
(1640-1715), noted representatives of the comic drama of the 
Restoration, which reached its highest point in Congreve. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 167 

nection between genius and profligacy, between the 
domestic virtues and the sullen formality of the Puri- 
tans. That error it is the glory of Addison to have 
dispelled. He taught the nation that the faith and 
the morality of Hale 1 and Tillotson might be found 
in company with wit more sparkling than the wit of 
Congreve, and with humor richer than the humor of 
Vanbrugh. 2 So effectually, indeed, did he retort on 
vice the mockery which had recently been directed 
against virtue, that since his time the open violation 
of decency has always been considered among us as 
the mark of a fool. And this revolution, the greatest 
and most salutary ever effected by any satirist, he 
accomplished, be it remembered, without writing one 
personal lampoon. 

/_ In the early contributions of Addison to "The Tat- 
ler " his peculiar powers were not fully exhibited, yet 
from the first his superiority to all his coadjutors was 
evident. Some of his later "Tatlers " are fully equal 
to anything that he ever wrote. Among the portraits, 
we most admire Tom Folio, Ned Softly, and the Po- 
litical Upholsterer. The proceedings of the "Court 
of Honor," the "Thermometer of Zeal," the story of 
the "Frozen Words," the "Memoirs of the Shilling," 
are excellent specimens of that ingenious and lively 
species of fiction in which Addison excelled all men. 
There is one still better paper of the same class ; but 
though that paper, a hundred and thirty-three years 

1 Sir Matthew Hale (1607-1676), the great Chief Justice, as 
much noted for his probity of character as for his juristic at- 
tainments. 

2 Sir John Vanbrugh (1666-1726), another of the comic dra- 
matists of the Restoration, humorous but coarse. 



168 MACAULAY. 

ago, was probably thought as edifying as one of Smal- 
ridge's l sermons, we dare not indicate it to the 
squeamish readers of the nineteenth century. 

During the session of Parliament which commenced 
in November, 1709, and which the impeachment of 
Sacheverell has made memorable, Addison appears to 
have resided in London. "The Tatler" was now 
more popular than any periodical paper had ever 
been, and his connection with it was generally known : 
it was not known, however, that almost everything 
good in "The Tatler " was his. The truth is, that the 
fifty or sixty numbers which we owe to him were not 
merely the best, but so decidedly the best that any 
five of them are more valuable than all the two hun- 
dred numbers in which he had no share. 2 

He required at this time all the solace which he 
could derive from literary success. The Queen had 
always disliked the Whigs. She had during some 
years disliked the Marlborough family : but, reigning 
by a disputed title, she could not venture directly to 
oppose herself to a majority of both houses of Parlia- 
ment ; and, engaged as she was in a war on the event 
of which her own crown was staked, she could not 
venture to disgrace a great and successful general. 
But at length, in the year 1710, the causes which had 
restrained her from showing her aversion to the Low 
Church party ceased to operate. The trial of Sachev- 
erell produced an outbreak of public feeling scarcely 
less violent than the outbreaks which we can ourselves 

1 George Smalridge, D. D. (1666-1719), noted scholar and 
divine, died Bishop of Bristol. He is the Favonius of The Tatler, 
No. 114. 

2 Almost certainly an exaggeration. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 169 

remember in 1820 and in 1831. l The country gentle- 
men, the country clergymen, the rabble of the towns, 
were all, for once, on the same side. It was clear 
that, if a general election took place before the excite- 
ment abated, the Tories would have a majority. The 
services of Marlborough had been so splendid that 
they were no longer necessary. The Queen's throne 
was secure from all attack on the part of Louis ; in- 
deed, it seemed much more likely that the English 
and German armies would divide the spoils of Ver- 
sailles and Marli 2 than that a marshal of France 
would bring back the Pretender 3 to St. James's. 4 
The Queen, acting by the advice of Harley, deter- 
mined to dismiss her servants. In June the change 
commenced. Sunderland was the first who fell. The 
Tories exulted over his fall. The Whigs tried, dur- 
ing a few weeks, to persuade themselves that her 
Majesty had acted only from personal dislike to the 
secretary, and that she meditated no further altera- 
tion; but, early in August, Godolphin was surprised 
by a letter from Anne which directed him to break 
his white staff. 5 Even after this event, the irresolu- 
tion or dissimulation of Harley kept up the hopes of 
the Whigs during another month, and then the ruin 

1 In 1820 the Reform agitation, the Cato Street Conspiracy, 
riots in Scotland, the trial of Queen Caroline. In 1831 the agi- 
tation over the defeat of the hill for Parliamentary Reform (car- 
ried in 1832). 

2 Marli was noted for the sumptuous gardens and chateau of 
Louis XIV. It was five miles north of Versailles, where the 
King's great palace was. 

3 See the essay on Milton, page G2, note 4. 

4 St. James's Palace, in London, long a residence of the Brit- 
ish sovereigns. 

6 The sign of the office of Lord High Treasurer. 



170 MACAU LAY. 

became rapid and violent. The Parliament was dis- 
solved. The ministers were turned out. The Tories 
were called to office. The tide of popularity ran vio- 
lently in favor of the High Church party. That 
party, feeble in the late House of Commons, was now 
irresistible. The power which the Tories had thus 
suddenly acquired, they used with blind and stupid 
ferocity. The howl which the whole pack set up for 
prey and for blood appalled even him 1 who had roused 
and unchained them. When, at this distance of time, 
we calmly review the conduct of the discarded minis- 
ters, we cannot but feel a movement of indignation 
at the injustice with which they were treated. No 
body of men had ever administered the government 
with more energy, ability, and moderation ; and their 
success had been proportioned to their wisdom. They 
had saved Holland and Germany. They had hum- 
bled France. They had, as it seemed, all but torn 
Spain from the house of Bourbon. They had made 
England the first power in Europe. At home they 
had united England and Scotland. 2 They had re- 
spected the rights of conscience and the liberty of the 
subject. They retired leaving their country at the 
height of prosperity and glory. And } y et they were 
pursued to their retreat by such a roar of obloquy as 
was never raised against the government which threw 
away thirteen colonies, or against the government 
which sent a gallant army to perish in the ditches of 
Walcheren. 3 

1 Harley. 

2 By the Act of Union, 1706. 

8 An island in the Dutch province of Zealand. In 1809 an 
expedition was sent thither in order to divert Napoleon for the 
benefit of Austria. The troops were taken with malaria, and 
thousands perished, so that the enterprise had to be abandoned, 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. Ill 

None of the Whigs suffered more in the general 
wreck than Addison. He had just sustained some 
heavy pecuniary losses, of the nature of which we 
are imperfectly informed, when his secretaryship was 
taken from him. He had reason to believe that he 
should also be deprived of the small Irish office which 
he held by patent. He had just resigned his fellow- 
ship. It seems probable that he had already ventured 
to raise his eyes to a great lady, 1 and that while his 
political friends were in power, and while his own 
fortunes were rising, he had been, in the phrase of 
the romances which were then fashionable, ""permitted 
to hope." But Mr. Addison the ingenious writer, 
and Mr. Addison the chief secretary, were, in her 
ladyship's opinion, two very different persons. All 
these calamities united, however, could not disturb 
the serene cheerfulness of a mind conscious of in- 
nocence, and rich in its own wealth. He told his 
friends, with smiling resignation, that they ought to 
admire his philosophy; that he had lost at once his 
fortune, his place, his fellowship, and his mistress; 
that he must think of turning tutor again; and yet 
that his spirits were as good as ever. 

He had one consolation. Of the unpopularity 
which his friends had incurred, he had no share. 
Such was the esteem with which he was regarded 
that, while the most violent measures were taken for 
the purpose of forcing Tory members on Whig corpo- 
rations, 2 he was returned to Parliament without even 

after having accomplished nothing, and having cost about 
twenty million pounds. 

1 The Countess Dowager of Warwick. See page 206. 

2 That is, on boroughs that usually returned Whig members 
of Parliament. 



172 MACAULAY. 

a contest. Swift, who was now in London, and who 
had already determined on quitting the Whigs, wrote 
to Stella in these remarkable words: "The Tories 
carry it among the new members six to one. Mr. 
Addison's election has passed easy and undisputed, 
and I believe, if he had a mind to be king, he would 
hardly be refused." 

The good will with which the Tories regarded Ad- 
dison is the more honorable to him, because it had 
not been purchased by any concession on his part. 
During the general election, he published a political 
journal entitled "The Whig Examiner." l Of that 
journal it may be sufficient to say that Johnson, in 
spite of his strong political prejudice, pronounced it 
to be superior in wit to any of Swift's writings on the 
other side. 2 When it ceased to appear, Swift, in a 
letter to Stella, expressed his exultation at the death 
of so formidable an antagonist. " He might well re- 
joice," says Johnson, "at the death of that which he 
could not have killed." "On no occasion," he adds, 
"was the genius of Addison more vigorously exerted, 
and on none did the superiority of his powers more 
evidently appear." 

The only use which Addison appears to have made 
of the favor with which he was regarded by the 
Tories was to save some of his friends from the gen- 
eral ruin of the Whig party. Pie felt himself to be 
iii a situation which made it his duty to take a de- 
cided part in politics. But the case of Steele and of 

1 Five numbers appeared, — Thursday, September 14, to 
Thursday, October 12, 1710. 

2 Swift was writing for The Examiner, a Tory organ, which 
seems to have run from August 3, 1710, to July 26, 1714. He 
was also writing pamphlets. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 173 

Ambrose Philips was different. For Philips, Addi- 
son even condescended to solicit, with what success 
we have not ascertained. Steele held two places: he 
was gazetteer, and he was also a commissioner of 
stamps. The gazette was taken from him, but he 
was suffered to retain his place in the Stamp Office 
on an implied understanding that he should not be 
active against the new government ; and he was, dur- 
ing more than two years, induced by Addison to 
observe this armistice with tolerable fidelity. 

Isaac Bickerstaff accordingly became silent upon 
politics, and the article of news which had once 
formed about one third of his paper altogether disap- 
peared. "The Tatler" had completely changed its 
character: it was now nothing but a series of essays 
on books, morals, and manners. Steele, therefore, 
resolved to bring it to a close, and to commence a 
new work on an improved plan. It was announced 
that this new work would be published daily. The 
undertaking was generally regarded as bold, or rather 
rash; but the event amply justified the confidence 
with which Steele relied on the fertility of Addison's 
genius. On the 2d of January, 1711, appeared the 
last "Tatler." At the beginning of. March following, 
appeared the first of an incomparable series of papers, 
containing observations on life and literature by an 
imaginary Spectator. 1 

The Spectator himself was conceived and drawn by 
Addison, and it is not easy to doubt that the portrait 

1 The Spectator ran from Thursday, March 1, 1710-11, to Sat- 
urday, December 6, 1712, — 555 daily numbers. On Friday, 
June 18, 1714, Addison took it up in tri-weekly numbers, and 
continued it to Monday, December 20, 1714, — making in all 
635 numbers. 



174 MACAU LAY. 

was meant to be in some features a likeness of the 
painter. The Spectator is a gentleman who, after 
passing a studious youth at the university, has trav- 
eled on classic ground, and has bestowed much atten- 
tion on curious points of antiquity. He has, on his 
return, fixed his residence in London, and has ob- 
served all the forms of life which are to be found in 
that great city; has daily listened to the wits of Will's, 
has smoked with the philosophers of the Grecian, and 
has mingled with the parsons at Child's and with the 
politicians at the St. James's. In the morning he 
often listens to the hum of the Exchange; in the 
evening his face is constantly to be seen in the pit of 
Drury Lane Theatre. But an insurmountable bash- 
fulness prevents him from opening his mouth, except 
in a small circle of intimate friends. 

These friends were first sketched by Steele. Four 
of the club — the templar, the clergyman, the soldier, 
and the merchant — were uninteresting figures, fit 
only for a background ; but the other two, — an old 
country baronet and an old town rake, — though not 
delineated with a very delicate pencil, had some good 
strokes. Addison took the rude outlines into his own 
hands, retouched them, colored them, and is in truth 
the creator of the Sir Roger de Coverley and the Will 
Honeycomb with whom we are all familiar. 

The plan of "The Spectator" must be allowed to 
be both original and eminently happy. Every valu- 
able essay in the series may be read with pleasure 
separately; yet the five or six hundred essays form 
a whole, and a whole which has the interest of a 
novel. It must be remembered, too, that at that 
time no novel giving a lively and powerful picture of 
the common life and manners of England had ap- 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 175 

peared. Richardson 1 was working as a compositor. 
Fielding was robbing birds'-nests. Smollett 2 was 
not yet born. The narrative, therefore, which con- 
nects together the Spectator's essays gave to our an- 
cestors their first taste of an exquisite and untried 
pleasure. That narrative was indeed constructed 
with no art or labor. The events were such events 
as occur every day. Sir Roger comes up to town to 
see Eugenio, as the worthy baronet always calls 
Prince Eugene, goes with the Spectator on the water 
to Spring Gardens, 3 walks among the tombs in the 
Abbey, and is frightened by the Mohawks, 4 but con- 
quers his apprehension so far as to go to the theatre 
when "The Distressed Mother " 5 is acted. The Spec- 
tator pays a visit in the summer to Coverley Hall ; is 
charmed with the old house, the old butler, and the 
old chaplain; eats a jack caught by Will Wimble; 
rides to the assizes, and hears a point of law discussed 
by Tom Touchy. At last a letter from the honest 
butler brings to the club the news that Sir Roger is 
dead. Will Honeycomb marries and reforms at sixty. 
The club breaks up, and the Spectator resigns his 
functions. Such events can hardly be said to form 
a plot; yet they are related with such truth, such 
grace, such wit, such humor, such pathos, such know- 

1 See the essay on Johnson, page 28, note 3. 

2 Tobias Smollett (1721-1771), the great Scotch story-teller 
rather than novelist, author of Roderick Random, Peregrine 
Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, etc. 

8 A pleasure resort at Charing Cross, afterwards the famous 
Vauxhall. See The Spectator, No. 383. 

4 A set of wild young men who assaulted wayfarers at night, 
and were suppressed with difficulty. 

6 A play by Ambrose Philips, translated from Racine's An- 
dromache, for which Addison wrote an epilogue. 



176 MACAULAY. 

ledge of the human heart, such knowledge of the ways 
of the world, that they charm us on the hundredth 
perusal. We have not the least doubt that, if Addi- 
son had written a novel on an extensive plan, it would 
have been superior to any that we possess. As it is, 
he is entitled to be considered not only as the greatest 
of the English essayists, but as the forerunner of the 
great English novelists. 

We say this of Addison alone, for Addison is the 
Spectator. About three sevenths of the work are 
his, and it is no exaggeration to say that his worst 
essay is as good as the best essay of any of his coad- 
jutors. His best essays approach near to absolute 
perfection; nor is their excellence more wonderful 
than their variety. His invention never seems to 
flag; nor is he ever under the necessity of repeating 
himself, or of wearing out a subject. There are no 
dregs in his wine. He regales us after the fashion 
of that prodigal nabob who held that there was only 
one good glass in a bottle. As soon as we have tasted 
the first sparkling foam of a jest, it is withdrawn, 
and a fresh draught of nectar is at our lips. On the 
Monday we have an allegory as lively and ingenious 
as Lucian's "Auction of Lives;" 1 on the Tuesday, 
an Eastern apologue as richly coloi'ed as the tales of 
Scheherezade ; 2 on the Wednesday, a character de- 
scribed with the skill of La Bruyere ; 3 on the Thurs- 
day, a scene from common life equal to the best chap- 

1 Lucian of Samosata (120-200 A. D. circa), the famous 
Greek satirist, noted for his Dialogues against superstition and 
vice. 

2 That is, The Arabian Nights' Entertainments. 

8 Jean de la Bruyere (1645-1696), a great French moralist. 
His chief work is called in brief The Characters. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 177 

ters in "The Vicar of Wakefield;" 1 on the Friday, 
some sly Horajfcian pleasantry on fashionable follies, 
on hoops, patches, or puppet shows ; and on the Sat- 
urday, a religious meditation which will bear a com- 
parison with the finest passages in Massillon. 2 

It is dangerous to select where there is so much 
that deserves the highest praise. We will venture, 
however, to say that any person who wishes to form 
a just notion of the extent and variety of Addison's 
powers will do well to read at one sitting- the follow- 
ing- papers, — the two "Visits to the Abbey," the 
"Visit to the Exchange," the "Journal of the Retired 
Citizen," the "Vision of Mirza," the "Transmigra- 
tions of Pug the Monkey," and the "Death of Sir 
Roger de Coverley." 

The least valuable of Addison's contributions to 
"The Spectator" are, in the judgment of our age, his 
critical papers; yet his critical papers are always 
luminous, and often ingenious. The very worst of 
them must be regarded as creditable to him, when 
the character of the school in which he had been 
trained is fairly considered. The best of them were 
much too good for his readers. In truth, he was not 
so far behind our generation as he was before his 
own. No essays in "The Spectator" were more cen- 
sured and derided than those in which he raised his 
voice against the contempt with which our fine old 
ballads were regarded, and showed the scoffers that 
the same gold which, burnished and polished, gives 
lustre to the "iEneid" and the Odes of Horace is 
mingled with the rude dross of "Chevy Chace." 

1 See the essay on Goldsmith, page 77. 

2 Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663-1742), the famous French 
preacher. 



178 MACAU LAY. 

It is not strange that the success of "The Specta- 
tor " should have been such as no similar work has 
ever obtained. The number of copies daily distrib- 
uted was at first three thousand. It subsequently 
increased, and had risen to near four thousand when 
the stamp tax was imposed. That tax was fatal to 
a crowd of journals. "The Spectator," however, 
stood its ground, doubled its price, and, though its 
circulation fell off, still yielded a large revenue both 
to the state and to the authors. For particular 
papers the demand was immense ; of some, it is said, 
twenty thousand copies were required. But this was 
not all. To have "The Spectator" served up every 
morning with the bohea and rolls was a luxury for 
the few. The majority were content to wait till 
essays enough had appeared to form a volume. Ten 
thousand copies of each volume were immediately 
taken off, and new editions were called for. It must 
be remembered that the population of England was 
then hardly a third of what it now is. The number 
of Englishmen who were in the habit of reading was 
probably not a sixth of what it now is. A shopkeeper 
or a farmer who found any pleasure in literature was 
a rarity. Nay, there was doubtless more than one 
knight of the shire x whose country-seat did not con- 
tain ten books, receipt books and books on farriery 
included. In these circumstances, the sale of "The 
Spectator " must be considered as indicating a popu- 
larity quite as great as that of the most successful 
works of Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Dickens in our 
own time. 

At the close of 1712 "The Spectator" ceased to 

appear. It was probably felt that the short-faced 

1 A member of the House of Commons for a county at large. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 179 

gentleman and his club had been long enough before 
the town, and that it was time to withdraw them, and 
to replace them by a new set of characters. In a few 
weeks the first number of "The Guardian " x was pub- 
lished; but " The Guardian " was unfortunate both in 
its birth and in its death. It began in dullness, and 
disappeared in a tempest of faction. The original 
plan was bad. Addison contributed nothing till sixty- 
six numbers had appeared ; and it was then impossi- 
ble to make ""The Guardian" what "The Spectator" 
had been. Nestor Ironside and the Miss Lizards 2 
were people to whom even he could impart no inter- 
est. He could only furnish some excellent little 
essays, both serious and comic; and this he did. 

Why Addison gave no assistance to "The Guar- 
dian " during the first two months of its existence is 
a question which has puzzled the editors and biogra- 
phers, but which seems to us to admit of a very easy 
solution. He was then engaged in bringing his 
"Cato" on the stage. 

The first four acts of this drama had been lying in 
his desk since his return from Italy. His modest and 
sensitive nature shrank from the risk of a public and 
shamef ul failure ; and, though all who saw the manu- 
script were loud in praise, some thought it possible 
that an audience might become impatient even of 
very good rhetoric, and advised Addison to print the 
j) lay without hazarding a representation. At length, 
after many fits of apprehension, the poet yielded to 
the urgency of his political friends, who hoped that 
the public would discover some analogy between the 

1 It ran for 175 numbers, being published daily from March 
12 to October 1, 1713. Addison wrote 53 numbers. 

2 The Guardian and his wards. 



180 MACAULAY. 

followers of Caesar and the Tories; between Sempro- 
nius 1 and the apostate Whigs ; between Cato, strug- 
gling to the last for the liberties of Rome, and the 
band of patriots who still stood firm round Halifax 
and Wharton. 

Addison gave the play to the managers of Drury 
Lane Theatre without stipulating for any advantage 
to himself. They therefore thought themselves bound 
to spare no cost in scenery and dresses. The decora- 
tions, it is true, would not have pleased the skillful 
eye of Mr. Macready. 2 Juba's waistcoat blazed with 
gold lace; Marcia's hoop was worthy of a duchess on 
the birthday; 3 and Cato wore a wig worth fifty guin- 
eas. The prologue was written by Pope, and is un- 
doubtedly a dignified and spirited composition. The 
part of the hero was excellently played by Booth. 4 
Steele undertook to pack a house. The boxes were 
in a blaze with the stars 5 of the peers in opposition. 
The pit was crowded with attentive and friendly lis- 
teners from the Inns of Court 6 and the literary coffee- 
houses. Sir Gilbert Heathcote, 7 governor of the 
Bank of England, was at the head of a powerful body 

1 A Roman senator, one of the characters of the play. 

2 William Charles Macready (1793-1873), in his prime as a 
tragedian when this essay was written. 

3 Juha was a prince of Nmnidia ; Marcia, Cato's daughter. 
" Birthday " refers to the reception held by the sovereign on 
this anniversary. 

4 Barton Booth (1681-1733), the leading tragedian of the 
day. 

5 That is, the insignia of the orders (Bath, Garter, etc.) to 
which they belonged. 

6 Incorporated legal societies in London which have the 
exclusive privilege of calling candidates to the bar. 

7 1651-1733. Also Lord Mayor of London ; mentioned favor- 
ably by both Pope and Swift. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 181 

of auxiliaries from the city, warm men and true 
Whigs, but better known at Jonathan's and Gang- 
way's 2 than in the haunts of wits and critics. 

These precautions were quite superfluous. The 
Tories, as a body, regarded Addison with no unkind 
feelings. Nor was it for their interest — professing, 
as they did, profound reverence for law and prescrip- 
tion, and abhorrence both of popular insurrections 
and of standing armies — to appropriate to them- 
selves reflections thrown on the great military chief 
and demagogue 2 who, with the support of the legions 
and of the common people, subverted all the ancient 
institutions of his country. Accordingly, every shout 
that was raised by the members of the Kit Cat was 
echoed by the High Churchmen of the October ; 3 and 
the curtain at length fell amidst thunders of unani- 
mous applause. 

The delight and admiration of the town were de- 
scribed by "The Guardian " in terms which we might 
attribute to partiality, were it not that "The Ex- 
aminer," the organ of the ministry, held similar lan- 
guage. The Tories, indeed, found much to sneer at 
in the conduct of their opponents. Steele had, on 
this as on other occasions, shown more zeal than 
taste or judgment. The honest citizens who marched 
under the orders of Sir Gibby, 4 as he was facetiously 
called, probably knew better when to buy and when 
to sell stock than when to clap and when to hiss at 

1 Coffee-houses frequented by commercial men. 

2 Csesar. 

3 A club frequented by Tory members of Parliament where 
much October ale was drunk. 

4 That is, Heathcote, though the sentence reads as if it wero 
Steele. 



182 MA CAUL AY. 

a play, and incurred some ridicule by making the 
hypocritical Sempronius their favorite, and by giving 
to his insincere rants louder plaudits than they be- 
stowed on the temperate eloquence of Cato. Whar- 
ton, 1 too, who had the incredible effrontery to applaud 
the lines about flying from prosperous vice and from 
the power of impious men to a private station, did 
not escape the sarcasms of those who justly thought 
that he could fly from nothing more vicious or im- 
pious than himself. The epilogue, which was written 
by Garth, 2 a zealous Whig, was severely and not 
unreasonably censured as ignoble and out of place. 
But Addison was described, even by the bitterest 
Tory writers, as a gentleman of wit and virtue, in 
whose friendship many persons of both parties were 
happy, and whose name ought not to be mixed up 
with factious squabbles. 

Of the jests by which the triumph of the Whig 
party was disturbed, the most severe and happy was 
Bolingbroke's. Between two acts he sent for Booth 
to his box, and presented him, before the whole the- 
atre, with a purse of fifty guineas for defending the 
cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator. 
This was a pungent allusion to the attempt which 
Marlborough had made, not long before his fall, to 
obtain a patent creating him captain-general for life. 

It was April, and in April a hundred and thirty 
years ago the London season was thought to be far 
advanced. During a whole month, however, "Cato" 
was performed to overflowing houses, and brought 

1 Philip, Duke of Wharton (1698-1731), son of the Marquis, 
noted for his debaucheries. 

2 Sir Samuel Garth (1660-1718), physician and poet, author 
of The Dispensary, a mock-heroic poem now little read. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF' ADDISON. 183 

into the treasury of the theatre twice the gains of an 
ordinary spring. In the summer the Drury Lane 
company went down to the act l at Oxford, and there, 
before an audience which retained an affectionate 
remembrance of Addison's accomplishments and vir- 
tues, his tragedy was acted during several days. 
The gownsmen began to besiege the theatre in the 
forenoon, and by one in the afternoon all the seats 
were filled. 

About the merits of the piece which had so extra- 
ordinary an effect, the public, we suppose, has made 
up its mind. To compare it with the masterpieces 
of the Attic stage, 2 with the great English dramas of 
the time of Elizabeth, or even with the productions 
of Schiller's 3 manhood, would be -absurd indeed. 
Yet it contains excellent dialogue and declamation, 
and, among plays fashioned on the French model, 
must be allowed to rank high; not, indeed, with 
"Athalie" or "Saul," but, we think, not below 
"China," 4 and certainly afiove any other English 
tragedy of the same school, above many of the plays 
of Corneille, above many of the plays of Voltaire and 
Alfieri, 5 and above some plays of Racine. Be this 
as it may, we have little doubt that "Cato" did as 
much as the "Tatlers," "Spectators," and "Free- 
holders" united to raise Addison's fame among his 
contemporaries. 

1 That is, the occasion of the completion of degrees. 

2 That is, with the plays of iEschylus, Sophocles, and Eurip- 
ides. 

3 Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805). Macaulay refers to 
such plays as Marin Stuart and Wilhelm Tell. 

4 Dramas by Racine, Alfieri, and Pierre Corneille (1606-1684). 

5 Count Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803), the great Italian tragic 
poet. 



184 MAC A (/LAY. 

The modesty and good nature of the successful 
dramatist had tamed even the malignity of faction. 
But literary envy, it should seem, is a fiercer passion 
than party spirit. It was by a zealous Whig that 
the fiercest attack on the Whig tragedy was made. 
John Dennis 1 published "Remarks on Cato," which 
were written with some acuteness and with much 
coarseness and asperity. Addison neither defended 
himself nor retaliated. On many points he had an 
excellent defense, and nothing would have been easier 
than to retaliate, for Dennis had written bad odes, 
bad tragedies, bad comedies; he had, moreover, a 
larger share than most men of those infirmities and 
eccentricities which excite laughter; and Addison's 
power of turning either an absurd book or an absurd 
man into ridicule was unrivaled. Addison, however, 
serenely conscious of his superiority, looked with pity 
on his assailant, whose temper, naturally irritable and 
gloomy, had been soured by want, by controversy, and 
by literary failures. 

But among the young candidates for Addison's 
favor there was one distinguished by talents from the 
rest, and distinguished, we fear, not less by malignity 
and insincerity. Pope was only twenty -five. But his 
powers had expanded to their full maturity ; and his 
best poem, "The Rape of the Lock," had recently 
been published. 2 Of his genius Addison had always 
expressed high admiration; but Addison had early 
discerned, what might, indeed, have been discerned 
by an eye less penetrating than his, that the diminu- 
tive, crooked, sickly boy was eager to revenge himself 

1 1657-1734. A critic who was himself the butt of Swift and 
Pope, whose satires have made him live. 

2 In 1714. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 185 

on society for the unkindness of nature. In "The 
Spectator," the "Essay on Criticism" had been 
praised with cordial warmth; but a gentle hint had 
been added that the writer of so excellent a poem 
would have done well to avoid ill-natured personali- 
ties. Pope, though evidently more galled by the 
censure than gratified by the praise, returned thanks 
for the admonition, and promised to profit by it. 
The two writers continued to exchange civilities, 
counsel, and small good offices. Addison publicly 
extolled Pope's miscellaneous pieces, and Pope fur- 
nished Addison with a prologue. This did not last 
long. Pope hated Dennis, whom he had injured 
without provocation. 1 The appearance of the "Re- 
marks on Cato " gave the irritable poet an opportu- 
nity of venting his malice under the show of friend- 
ship; and such an opportunity could not but be 
welcome to a nature which was implacable in en- 
mity, and which always preferred the tortuous to 
the straight path. He published, accordingly, "The 
Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis." But Pope 
had mistaken his powers. He was a great master of 
invective and sarcasm ; he could dissect a character 
in terse and sonorous couplets, brilliant with antithe- 
sis; but of dramatic talent he was altogether desti- 
tute. If he had written a lampoon on Dennis, such 
as that on Atticus or that on Sporus, 2 the old grum- 
bler would have been crushed. But Pope writing 
dialogue resembled — to borrow Horace's imagery 

1 Probably in the Essay on Criticism. 

2 For the lampoon on Atticus see page 203 and note ; this fa- 
mous attack, together with that on Sporus (John, Lord Hervey, 
author of the Memoirs of the Court of George II.), occurs in the 
Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 



186 MACAU LAY. 

and his own — a wolf which, instead of biting - , should 
take to kicking, or a monkey which should try to 
sting. 1 The "Narrative" is utterly contemptible. Of 
argument there is not even a show; and the jests are 
such as, if they were introduced into a farce, would 
call forth the hisses of the shilling gallery. Dennis 
raves about the drama, and the nurse thinks that 
he is calling for a dram. "There is," he cries, "no 
peripetia 2 in the tragedy, no change of fortune, no 
change at all." "Pray, good sir, be not angry," says 
the old woman; "I'll fetch change." This is not 
exactly the pleasantry of Addison. 3 

There can be no doubt that Addison saw through 
this officious zeal, and felt himself deeply aggrieved 
by it. So foolish and spiteful a pamphlet could do 
him no good, and, if he were thought to have any 
hand in it, must do him harm. Gifted with incom- 
parable powers of ridicule, he had never, even in self- 
defense, used those powers inhumanly or uncourte- 
ously ; and he was not disposed to let others make his 
fame and his interests a pretext under which they 
might commit outrages from which he had himself 
constantly abstained. He accordingly declared that 
he had no concern in the "Narrative," that he disap- 
proved of it, and that, if he answered the remarks, he 
would answer them like a gentleman; and he took 
care to communicate this to Dennis. Pope was bit- 
terly mortified, and to this transaction we are inclined 
to ascribe the hatred with which he ever after re- 
garded Addison. 

1 Horace, Satires, II. i. 55 ; Pope's imitation, 11. 86, 87. 

2 " Peripetia," that part of a drama in which the plot is unrav- 
eled and the whole concludes. 

3 Maeaulay has not in the least exaggerated the worthlessnesa 
of Pope's performance. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 187 

In September, 1713, "The Guardian" ceased to 
appear. Steele had gone mad about .politics. A gen- 
eral election had just taken place. He had been 
chosen member for Stockbridge, and he fully ex- 
pected to play a first part in Parliament. The im- 
mense success of the "Tatler" and "Spectator" had 
turned his head. He had been the editor of both 
those papers, and was not aware how entirely they 
owed their influence and popularity to the genius of 
his friend. His spirits, always violent, were now 
excited by vanity, ambition, and faction to such a 
pitch that he every day committed some offense 
against good sense and good taste. All the discreet 
and moderate members of his own party regretted 
and condemned his folly. " I am in a thousand trou- 
bles," Addison wrote, "about poor Dick, and wish 
that his zeal for the public may not be ruinous to 
himself. But he has sent me word that he is deter- 
mined to go on, and that any advice I may give him 
in this particular will have no weight with him." 

Steele set up a political paper called "The English- 
man," 1 which, as it was not supported by contributions 
from Addison, completely failed. By this work, by 
some other writings of the same kind, and by the airs 
which he gave himself at the first meeting of the new 
Parliament, he made the Tories so angry that they 
determined to expel him. 2 The Whigs stood by him 
gallantly, but were unable to save him. The vote of 
expulsion was regarded by all dispassionate men as 
a tyrannical exercise of the power of the majority. 
But Steele's violence and folly, though they by no 
means justified the steps which his enemies took, had 

1 It ran 50 numbers, beginning October 6, 1713. 

2 He was expelled March 18, 1714. 



188 MACAULAY. 

completely disgusted his friends; nor did he ever 
regain the place which he had held in the public esti- 
mation. 

Addison about this time conceived the design of 
adding an eighth volume to "The Spectator." In 
June, 1714, the first number of the new series ap- 
peared, and during about six months three papers 
were published weekly. 1 Nothing can be more strik- 
ing than the contrast between "The Englishman " and 
the eighth volume of "The Spectator," between Steele 
without Addison and Addison without Steele. "The 
Englishman " is forgotten, — the eighth volume of 
"The Spectator " contains, perhaps, the finest essays, 
both serious and playful, in the English language. 

Before this volume was completed, the death of 
Anne 2 produced an entire change in the administra- 
tion of public affairs. The blow fell suddenly. It 
found the Tory party distracted by internal feuds, 
and unprepared for any great effort. Harley had 
just been disgraced. Bolingbroke, it was supposed, 
would be the chief minister. But the Queen was on 
her death-bed before the white staff had been given, 
and her last public act was to deliver it with a feeble 
hand to the Duke of Shrewsbury. The emergency 
produced a coalition between all sections of public 
men who wei^e attached to the Protestant succession. 
George I. was proclaimed without opposition. A 
council, in which the leading Whigs had seats, took 
the direction of affairs till the new King should arrive. 
The first act of the lords justices was to appoint Addi- 
son their secretary. 

1 From Friday, June 18, to Monday, December 20, 1714, 79 
numbers. 

2 August, 1714. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 189 

There is an idle tradition that he was directed to 
prepare a letter to the King ; that he could not satisfy 
himself as to the style of this composition, and that 
the lords justices called in a clerk, who at once did 
what was wanted. It is not strange that a story so 
flattering to mediocrity should he popular, and we 
are sorry to deprive dunces of their consolation. But 
the truth must be told. It was well observed by Sir 
James Mackintosh, 1 whose knowledge of these times 
was unequaled, that Addison never, in any official 
document, affected wit or eloquence, and that his dis- 
patches are, without exception, remarkable for un- 
pretending simplicity. Everybody who knows with 
what ease Addison's finest essays were produced must 
be convinced that, if well - turned phrases had been 
wanted, he would have had no difficulty in finding 
them. We are, however, inclined to believe that the 
story is not absolutely without a foundation. It may 
well be that Addison did not know, till he had con- 
sulted experienced clerks who remembered the time 
when William III. was absent on the Continent, in 
what form a letter from the Council of Regency to 
the King ought to be drawn. We think it very 
likely that the ablest statesmen of our time — Lord 
John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, for 
example — would, in similar circumstances, be found 
quite as ignorant. Every office has some little mys- 
teries which the dullest man may learn with a little 
attention, and which the greatest man cannot possibly 
know by intuition. One paper must be signed by 
the chief of the department ; another by his dejmty ; 

1 1765-1832. Statesman, essayist, and historian. See Ma- 
eaulay's essay on him. He wrote a work on the Revolution of 
1688." 



190 MACAU LAY. 

to a third the royal sign manual is necessary. One 
communication is to be registered, and another is not. 
One sentence must be in black ink, and another in 
red ink. If the ablest secretary for Ireland were 
moved to the India Board, 1 if the ablest president of 
the India Board were moved to the War Office, he 
would require instruction on points like these; and 
we do not doubt that Addison required such instruc- 
tion when he became, for the first time, secretary to 
the lords justices. 

George I. took possession of his kingdom without 
opposition. A new ministry was formed, and a new 
Parliament favorable to the Whigs chosen. Sunder- 
land was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland, and 
Addison again went to Dublin as chief secretary. 

At Dublin, Swift resided; and there was much 
speculation about the way in which the Dean and the 
Secretary would behave towards each other. The 
relations which existed between these remarkable men 
form an interesting and pleasing portion of literary 
history. They had early attached themselves to the 
same political party and to the same patrons. While 
Anne's Whig ministry was in power, the visits of 
Swift to London, and the official residence of Ad- 
dison in Ireland, had given them opportunities of 
knowing each other. They were the two shrewdest 
observers of their age, but their observations on each 
other had led them to favorable conclusions. Swift 
did full justice to the rare powers of conversation 
which were latent under the bashful deportment of 
Addison. Addison, on the other hand, discerned 
much good nature under the severe look and manner 

1 The administration of India did not pass from the East 
India Company to the Crown until 1858. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 191 

of Swift; and, indeed, the Swift of 1708 and the 
Swift of 1738 1 were two very different men. 

But the paths of the two friends diverged widely. 
The Whig statesmen loaded Addison with solid bene- 
fits. They praised Swift, asked him to dinner, and 
did nothing more for him. His profession laid them 
under a difficulty. In the State they could not pro- 
mote him, and they had reason to fear that, by be- 
stowing preferment in the Church on the author of 
"The Tale of a Tub," 2 they might give scandal to the 
public, which had no high opinion of their orthodoxy. 
He did not make fair allowance for the difficulties 
which prevented Halifax and Somers from serving 
him, thought himself an ill-used man, sacrificed honor 
and consistency to revenge, joined the Tories, and 
became their most formidable champion. He soon 
found, however, that his old friends were less to 
blame than he had supposed. The dislike with which 
the Queen and the heads of the Church regarded him 
was insurmountable; and it was with the greatest 
difficulty that he obtained an ecclesiastical dignity of 
no great value, on condition of fixing his residence in 
a country which he detested. 

Difference of political opinion had produced, not, 
indeed, a quarrel, but a coolness, between Swift and 
Addison. They at length ceased altogether to see 
each other. Yet there was between them a tacit 
compact like that between the hereditary guests 3 in 
the "Iliad:" — 

1 At the latter date Swift had suffered impairment of his 
mental powers and had become more moody and misanthropi- 
cal. 

2 A powerful satire by Swift, written in the High Church 
interest, but in such a way as to shock many readers. 

3 Grlaucus and Diomed. 



192 M AC AULA Y. 

"Eyx^a 8' aW^iKaii/ aAec6;ue#a Kal 81 6fii\ow 
TloWol fxtv yap i/xol Tpaxs kKhtoI t' iiriKovpoi, 
Kre'iveiv, uv /ce Serfs ye Tr6prj not iroaal kix<:[<», 
TloWol 8' av col 'Axaiol, fvaipe/xev, bv Ke Svvrjai. 1 

Iliad, Lib. VI. 22(5-229. 

It is not strange that Addison, who calumniated 
and insulted nobody, should not have calumniated or 
insulted Swift; but it is remarkable that Swift, to 
whom neither genius nor virtue was sacred, and who 
generally seemed to find, like most other renegades, 
a peculiar pleasure in attacking old friends, should 
have shown so much respect and tenderness to Addi- 
son. 

Fortune had now changed. The accession of the 
house of Hanover had secured in England the liber- 
ties of the people, and in Ireland the dominion of the 
Protestant caste. To that caste Swift was more odi- 
ous than any other man. He was hooted and even 
pelted in the streets of Dublin, and could not venture 
to ride along the strand for his health without the 
attendance of armed servants. Many whom he had 
formerly served now libeled and insulted him. At 
this time Addison arrived. He had been advised not 
to show the smallest civility to the Dean of St. Pat- 
rick's. He had answered, with admirable spirit, that 
it might be necessary for men whose fidelity to their 
party was suspected to hold no intercourse with politi- 
cal opponents, but that one who had been a steady 
Whig in the worst times might venture, when the 
good cause was triumphant, to shake hands with an 

1 " Enough of Trojans to this lance shall yield, 
In the full harvest of yon ample field; 
Enough of Greeks shall dye thy spear with gore; 
But thou and Diomed be foes no more." 

Pope. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 193 

old friend who was one of the vanquished Tories. 
His kindness was soothing to the proud and cruelly 
wounded spirit of Swift, and the two great satirists 
resumed their habits of friendly intercourse. 

Those associates of Addison whose political opin- 
ions agreed with his shared his good fortune. He 
took Tickell * with him to Ireland. He procured for 
Budgell a lucrative place in the same kingdom. Am- 
brose Philips was provided for in England. 2 Steele 
had injured himself so much by his eccentricity and 
perverseness that he obtained but a very small part 
of what he thought his due. He was, however, 
knighted ; he had a place in the household ; 3 and he 
subsequently received other marks of favor from the 
court. 

Addison did not remain long in Ireland. In 1715 
he quitted his secretaryship for a seat at the Board of 
Trade. In the same year his comedy of "The Drum- 
mer" was brought on the stage. The name of the 
author was not announced. The piece was coldly 
received, and some critics have expressed a doubt 
whether it were really Addison's. To us the evi- 
dence, both external and internal, seems decisive. 
It is not in Addison's best manner, but it contains 
numerous passages which no other writer known to us 
could have produced. It was again performed after 
Addison's death, and, being known to be his, was 
loudly applauded. 

1 As private secretary. 

2 Budgell was clerk ami uncler-secretary to Addison and 
afterwards comptroller of the Irish revenue; Johnson says Phil- 
ips was made only a lottery commissioner and justice of the 
peace. 

3 Surveyor of the royal stables, but he got several other 
favors. See Aitkin's Life. 



194 MACAU LAY. 

Towards the close of the year 1715, while the 
Rebellion was still raging in Scotland, 1 Addison 
published the first number of a paper called "The 
Freeholder.''' 2 Among his political works "The 
Freeholder " is entitled to the first place. Even in 
"The Spectator" there are few serious papers nobler 
than the character of his friend Lord Somers, aud cer- 
tainly no satirical papers superior to those in which 
the Tory fox -hunter is introduced. This character is 
the original of Squire Western, 3 and is drawn with all 
Fielding's force, and with a delicacy of which Field- 
ing was altogether destitute. As none of Addison's 
works exhibit stronger marks of his genius than "The 
Freeholder," so none does more honor to his moral 
character. It is difficult to extol too highly the can- 
dor and humanity of a political writer whom even the 
excitement of civil war cannot hurry into unseemly 
violence. Oxford, it is well known, was then the 
stronghold of Toryism. The High Street had been 
repeatedly lined with bayonets in order to keep down 
the disaffected gownsmen ; and traitors pursued by 
the messengers of the government had been concealed 
in the garrets of several colleges. Yet the admoni- 
tion which, even under such circumstances, Addison 
addressed to the university, is singularly gentle, re- 
spectful, and even affectionate; indeed, he could not 
find it in his heart to deal harshly even with im- 
aginary persons. His fox-hunter, though ignorant, 
stupid, and violent, is at heart a good fellow, and 
is at last reclaimed by the clemency of the King. 
Steele was dissatisfied with his friend's moderation, 

1 Instigated by the Old Pretender and his followers. 

2 See page 120, note 6. 

8 In Fielding's Tom Jones. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 195 

and, though he acknowledged that "The Freeholder" 
was excellently written, complained that the ministry 
played on a lute when it was necessary to blow the 
trumpet. He accordingly determined to execute a 
flourish after his own fashion, and tried to rouse the 
public spirit of the nation by means of a paper called 
the "Town Talk," which is now as utterly forgotten 
as his "Englishman," as his "Crisis," as his "Letter 
to the Bailiff of Stockbridge," as his "Reader;" in 
short, as everything that he wrote without the help of 
Addison. 1 

In the same year in which "The Drummer" was 
acted, and in which the first numbers of "The Free- 
holder" appeared, the estrangement of Pope and 
Addison became complete. Addison had from the 
first seen that Pope was false and malevolent. Pope 
had discovered that Addison was jealous. The dis- 
covery was made in a strange manner. Pope had 
written "The Rape of the Lock," in two cantos, with- 
out supernatural machinery. These two cantos had 
been loudly applauded, and by none more loudly than 
by Addison. Then Pope thought of the sylphs and 
gnomes, Ariel, Momentilla, Crispissa, and Umbriel, 
and resolved to interweave the Rosicrucian 2 mythol- 

1 A thoroughly exaggerated statement which will he ohjected 
to even by persons who are not particularly attracted to Steele. 
Town Talk ran from December 17, 1714, to February 13, 1715- 
16. The Reader appeared in 1714 and reached only nine num- 
bers. The Crisis appeared in 1714 ; the Letter to the Bailiff in 
1713. Professor Morley has reprinted The Crisis in his Famous 
Pamphlets (" Universal Library "). 

2 In 1614 there was an anonymous work published in Ger- 
many witli the avowed object of testing the pretensions of a 
certain order known as Rosicrucians, which was said to have 
been founded by Christian Rosenkreutz, in the fifteenth century. 



196 MA CAUL AY. 

ogy with the original fabric. He asked Addison's 
advice. Addison said that the poem as it stood was 
a delicious little thing, and entreated Pope not to run 
the risk of marring what was so excellent in trying to 
mend it. Pope afterwards declared that this insidi- 
ous counsel first opened his eyes to the baseness of 
him who gave it. 1 

Now there can be no doubt that Pope's plan was 
most ingenious, and that he afterwards executed it 
with great skill and success; but does it necessa- 
rily follow that Addison's advice was bad? And, if 
Addison's advice was bad, does it necessarily follow 
that it was given from bad motives ? If a friend were 
to ask us whether we would advise him to risk his all 
in a lottery of which the chances were ten to one 
against him, we should do our best to dissuade him 
from running such a risk. Even if he were so lucky 
as to get the thirty thousand pound prize, we should 
not admit that we had counseled him ill, and we 
should certainly think it the height of injustice in 
him to accuse us of having been actuated by malice. 
We think Addison's advice good advice. It rested 
on a sound principle, the result of long and wide ex- 
perience. The general rule undoubtedly is, that, 
when a successful work of imagination has been pro- 
duced, it should not be recast. We cannot at this 
moment call to mind a single instance in which this 
rule has been transgressed with happy effect, except 

Their founder was supposed to have got various wonderful 
secrets (such as the art of making gold, etc.) from the East, 
and these mysteries his disciples practiced. The whole thing 
seems to have been a joke, but it was taken seriously and quite a 
literature pro and con sprang up about it. 

1 Greene, who included Macaulay's essay in his edition of 
Addison, says that this statement comes from Warburton. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 197 

the instance of "The Rape of the Lock." Tasso re- 
cast his " Jerusalem." Akensicle l recast his "Pleas- 
ures of the Imagination " and his "Epistle to Curio." 
Pope himself, emboldened no doubt by the success 
with which he had expanded and remodeled "The 
Rape of the Lock," made the same experiment on 
"The Dunciad." All these attempts failed. Who 
was to foresee that Pope would, once in his life, be 
able to do what he could not himself do twice, and 
what nobody else has ever done? 

Addison's advice was good; but, had it been bad, 
why should we pronounce it dishonest ? Scott tells 
us that one of his best friends predicted the failure 
of "Waverley." Herder 2 adjured Goethe not to 
take so unpromising a subject as Faust. Hume tried 
to dissuade Robertson from writing "The History of 
Charles the Fifth." Nay, Pope himself was one of 
those who prophesied that "Cato" would never suc- 
ceed on the stage, and advised Addison to print it 
without risking a representation. But Scott, Goethe, 
Robertson, Addison, had the good sense and generos- 
ity to give their advisers credit for the best inten- 
tions. Pope's heart was not of the same kind with 
theirs. 

In 1715, while he was engaged in translating the 
"Iliad," he met Addison at a coffee-house. Philips 
and Budgell were there ; but their sovereign got rid 
of them, and asked Pope to dine with him alone. 
After dinner, Addison said that he lay under a dif- 

J Dr. Mark Akensicle (1721-1770), poet and physician, was 
once much more famous than he is to-day. Smollett satirized 
him in Peregrine Pickle. 

2 Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), a celebrated phi- 
losopher, critic, and poet. 



198 MACAU LAY. 

ficulty which he wished to explain. "Tickell," he 
said, "translated some time ago the first book of the 
' Iliad.' I have promised to look it over and correct 
it. I cannot therefore ask to see yours, for that 
would be double-dealing." Pope made a civil reply, 
and begged that his second book might have the 
advantage of Addison's revision. Addison readily 
agreed, looked over the second book, and sent it back 
with warm commendations. 

Tickell's version of the first book appeared soon 
after this conversation. In the preface, all rivalry 
was earnestly disclaimed. Tickell declared that he 
should not go on with the "Iliad." That enterprise 
he should leave to powers which he admitted to be 
superior to his own. His only view, he said, in pub- 
lishing this specimen, was to bespeak the favor of the 
public to a translation of the "Odyssey " in which he 
had made some progress. 

Addison, and Addison's devoted followers, pro- 
nounced both the versions good, but maintained that 
Tickell's had more of the original. The town gave 
a decided preference to Pope's. We do not think it 
worth while to settle such a question of precedence. 
Neither of the rivals can be said to have translated 
the "Iliad," unless, indeed, the word "translation" 
be used in the sense which it bears in the "Midsum- 
mer Night's Dream." 1 When Bottom makes his 
appearance with an ass's head instead of his own, 
Peter Quince exclaims, "Bless thee, Bottom! bless 
thee! thou art translated." In this sense, undoubt- 
edly, the readers of either Pope or Tickell may very 
properly exclaim, "Bless thee, Homer! thou art trans- 
lated indeed." 2 

1 See Act III. Scene i. line 121. 

2 This clever bit of humorous criticism should not blind the 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 199 

Our readers will, we hope, agree with us in think- 
ing that no man in Addison's situation could have 
acted more fairly and kindly, both towards Pope and 
towards Tickell, than he appears to have done. But 
an odious suspicion had sprung up in the mind of 
Pope. He fancied, and he soon firmly believed, that 
there was a deep conspiracy against his fame and his 
fortunes. The work on which he had staked his 
reputation was to be depreciated. The subscription, 
on which rested his hopes of a competence, was to be 
defeated. With this view, Addison had made a rival 
translation; Tickell had consented to father it; and 
the wits of Button's had united to puff it. 

Is there any external evidence to support this grave 
accusation? The answer is short. There is abso- 
lutely none. 

Was there any internal evidence which proved 
Addison to be the author of this version? Was it 
a work which Tickell was incapable of producing? 
Surely not. Tickell was a fellow of a college at Ox- 
ford, 1 and must be supposed to have been able to con- 
strue the "Iliad; " and he was a better versifier than 
his friend. We are not aware that Pope pretended 
to have discovered any turns of expression peculiar 
to Addison. Had such turns of expression been dis- 
covered, they would be sufficiently accounted for by 
supposing Addison to have corrected his friend's 
lines, as he owned that he had done. 

Is there anything in the character of the accused 
persons which makes the accusation probable? We 
answer confidently, Nothing. Tickell was long after 

student to the real merits of Pope's Homer viewed as a poem 
per se, not as a translation. 
1 Queen's College, 



200 MACAULAY. 

this time described by Pope himself as a very fair 
and worthy man. Addison had been, during- many 
years, before the public. Literary rivals, political 
opponents, had kept their eyes on him. But neither 
envy nor faction, in their utmost rage, had ever im- 
puted to him a single deviation from the laws of honor 
and of social morality. Had he been, indeed, a man 
meanly jealous of fame, and capable of stooping to 
base and wicked arts for- the purpose of injuring his 
competitors, would his vices have remained latent 
so long ? He was a writer of tragedy : had he ever 
injured Rowe? He was a writer of comedy: had 
he not done ample justice to Congreve, and given 
valuable help to Steele? He was a pamphleteer: 
have not his good nature and generosity been acknow- 
ledged by Swift, his rival in fame and his adversary 
in politics? 

That Tickell should have been guilty of a villany 
seems to us highly improbable. That Addison should 
have been guilty of a villany seems to us highly 
improbable. But that these two men should have 
conspired together to commit a villany seems to us 
improbable in a tenfold degree. All that is known to 
us of their intercourse tends to prove that it was not 
the intercourse of two accomplices in crime. These 
are some of the lines in which Tickell poured forth 
his sorrow over the coffin of Addison : — 

" Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind, 
A task well suited to thy gentle mind ? 
Oh, if, sometimes thy spotless form descend, 
To me thine aid, thou guardian genius, lend. 
When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms, 
When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms, 
In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart, 
And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart ; 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 201 

Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before, 
Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more." 1 

In what words, we should like to know, did this 
guardian genius invite his pupil to join in a plan 
such as the editor of "The Satirist " would hardly 
dare to propose to the editor of "The Age "? 2 

We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation 
which he knew to be false. We have not the smallest 
doubt that he believed it to be true, and the evidence 
on which he believed it he found in his own bad 
heart. His own life was one long series of tricks as 
mean and as malicious as that of which he suspected 
Addison and Tickell. He was all stiletto and mask. 
To injure, to insult, and to save himself from the 
consequences of injury and insult by lying and equiv- 
ocating, was the habit of his life. He published a 
lampoon on the Duke of Chandos; 3 he was taxed 
with it, and he lied and equivocated. He published 
a lampoon on Aaron Hill ; 4 he was taxed with it, and 
he lied and equivocated. He published a still fouler 
lampoon on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu ; 5 he was 

1 See page 217, text and note 1. 

2 Low London papers of Macaulay's day. 

3 See Moral Essays, iv. 99. Pope, in a note to Moral Essays, 
iii., denied that he meant to ridicule " a worthy nobleman merely 
for his bad taste." James Bridges, first Duke of Chandos, 
(1G73-1744). 

4 Aaron Hill (1685-1750) was a dramatist and small poet and 
manager of the opera house. Pope is supposed to have referred 
to him in The Dunciad, ii. 295-298. Pope denied the reference, 
though on the whole his remarks were complimentary, which 
makes one question Macaulay's use of " lampoon " unless he had 
another passage in mind. 

5 This probably refers to Moral Essays, ii., where Lady Mary 
is said to figure as Sappho ; or to the imitation of the Second 
Satire of Horace's Second Book, lines 49-60. Lady Mary replied 



202 MA CAUL AY. 

taxed with it, and lie lied with more than usual 
effrontery and vehemence. He puffed himself and 
abused his enemies under feigned names. He robbed 
himself of his own letters, and then raised the hue 
and cry after them. Besides his frauds of malignity, 
of fear, of interest, and of vanity, there were frauds 
which he seems to have committed from love of fraud 
alone. He had a habit of stratagem, a pleasure in 
outwitting all who came near him. Whatever his 
object might be, the indirect road to it was that which 
he preferred. For Bolingbroke, Pope undoubtedly 
felt as much love and veneration as it was in his 
nature to feel for airy human being; yet Pope was 
scarcely dead when it v/as discovered that, from no 
motive except the mere love of artifice, he had been 
guilty of an act of gross perfidy to Bolingbroke. 1 

Nothing was more natural than that such a man 
as this should attribute to others that which he felt 
within himself. A plain, probable, coherent expla- 
nation is frankly given to him : he is certain that it 
is all a romance. A line of conduct scrupulously 
fair, and even friendly, is pursued towards him: he 
is convinced that it is merely a cover for a vile in- 
trigue by which he is to be disgraced and ruined. It 
is vain to ask him for proofs. He has none, and 
wants none, except those which he carries in his own 
bosom. 

Whether Pope's malignity at length provoked Ad- 
dison to retaliate for the first and last time, cannot 

in kind, and so deserves very little sympathy. Pope has ever 
since been known as " the wicked wasp of Twickenham." 

1 The printing without permission and with alterations certain 
letters of Bolingbroke's. For all these points about Pope see 
the Life by Conrthope in the Elwin-Courthope edition. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 203 

now be known with certainty. We have only Pope's 
story, which runs thus : a pamphlet appeared contain- 
ing some reflections which stung Pope to the quick. 
What those reflections were, and whether they were 
reflections of which he had a right to complain, we 
have now no means of deciding. The Earl of War- 
wick, 1 a foolish and vicious lad, who regarded Addi- 
son with the feelings with which such lads generally 
regard their best friends, told Pope, truly or falsely, 
that this pamphlet had been written by Addison's 
direction. When we consider what a tendency stories 
have to grow in passing even from one honest man to 
another honest man, and when we consider that to 
the name of honest man neither Pope nor the Earl of 
Warwick had a claim, we are not disposed to attach 
much importance to this anecdote. 

It is certain, however, that Pope was furious. He 
had already sketched the character of Atticus in 
prose. In his anger he turned this prose into the 
brilliant and energetic lines which everybody knows 
by heart, or ought to know by heart, and sent them 
to Addison. 2 One charge which Pope has enforced 

1 Afterwards Addison's step-son. 

2 The lines, first printed in connection with other verses in 
1723, are 193-214 of the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735): — 

" Peace to all such ! but were there one whose fires 
True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires ; 
Blest with each talent and each art to please, 
And born to write, converse and live with ease : 
Should such a man. too fond to rule alone, 
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne, 
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, 
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise ; 
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; 
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, 
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike 
Alike reserved to blame, or to commend, 
A timorous foe and a suspicious friend ; 



204 MACAULAY. 

with great skill is probably not without foundation. 
Addison was, we are inclined to believe, too fond of 
presiding over a circle of humble friends. Of the 
other imputations which these famous lines are in- 
tended to convey, scarcely one has ever been proved 
to be just, and some are certainly false. That Addi- 
son was not in the habit of "damning with faint 
praise" appears from innumerable passages in his 
writings, and from none more than from those in 
which he mentions Pope. And it is not merely un- 
just, but ridiculous, to describe a man who made the 
fortune of almost every one of his intimate friends 
as "so obliging that he ne'er obliged." 

That Addison felt the sting of Pope's satire keenly, 
we cannot doubt; that he was conscious of one of the 
weaknesses with which he was reproached, is highly 
probable: but his heart, we firmly believe, acquitted 
him of the gravest part of the accusation. He acted 
like himself. As a satirist, he was at his own weap- 
ons more than Pope's match, and he would have 
been at no loss for topics. A distorted and diseased 
body, tenanted by a yet more distorted and diseased 
mind; spite and envy thinly disguised by sentiments 
as benevolent and noble as those which Sir Peter 
Teazle admired in Mr. Joseph Surface ; l a feeble, 
sickly licentiousness; an odious love of filthy and 
noisome images, — these were things which a genius 



Dreading ev'n fools, by flatterers besieged, 
And so obliging that he ne'er obliged ; 
Like Cato, give his little Senate laws, 
And sit attentive to his own applause, 
While wits and templars every sentence raise, 
And wonder with a foolish face of praise : 
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be ? 
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he? " 

Characters in Sheridan's School for Scandal. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 205 

less powerful than that to which we owe "The Spec- 
tator " could easily have held up to the mirth and 
hatred of mankind. Addison had, moreover, at his 
command other means of vengeance, which a had man 
would not have scrupled to use. He was power- 
ful in the State. Pope was a Catholic, and in those 
times a minister would have found it easy to harass 
the most innocent Catholic by innumerable petty 
vexations. Pope, near twenty years later, said that 
"through the lenity of the government alone he could 
live with comfort." "Consider," he exclaimed, "the 
injury that a man of high rank and credit may do to 
a private person, under penal laws and many other 
disadvantages." It is pleasing to reflect that the only 
revenge which Addison took was to insert in "The 
Freeholder " l a warm encomium on the translation 
of the "Iliad," and to exhort all lovers of learning to 
put down their names as subscribers. There could 
be no doubt, he said, from the specimens already 
published, that the masterly hand of Pope would do 
as much for Homer as Dryden had done for Virgil. 
From that time to the end of his life, he always 
treated Pope, by Pope's own acknowledgment, with 
justice. Friendship was, of course, at an end. 

One reason which induced the Earl of Warwick to 
play the ignominious part of tale-bearer on this occa- 
sion may have been his dislike of the marriage which 
was about to take place between his mother and 
Addison. The countess dowager, 2 a daughter of the 

1 No. 40. 

2 Charlotte, daughter of Sir Thomas Middleton, married Ed- 
ward Rich, third Earl of Holland and sixth Earl of Warwick. 
She had by him a son, Edward Henry Rich (the Earl of War- 
wick of the text), who died unmarried in 1721. The countess 
died in 1731, leaving one daughter by Addison. 



206 MAC A UL AY. 

old and honorable family of the Middletons of Chirk, 
a family which in any country but ours would be 
called noble, resided at Holland House. 1 Addison 
had, during some years, occupied at Chelsea a small 
dwelling, once the abode of Nell Gwynn. 2 Chelsea 
is now a district of London, and Holland House may 
be called a town residence ; but, in the days of Anne 
and George I., milkmaids and sportsmen wandered 
between green hedges, and over fields bright with 
daisies, from Kensington almost to the shore of the 
Thames. Addison and Lady Warwick were country 
neighbors, and became intimate friends. The great wit 
and scholar tried to allure the young lord from the 
fashionable amusements of beating watchmen, break- 
ing windows, and rolling women in hogsheads down 
Holborn Hill, to the study of letters and the practice of 
virtue. These well-meant exertions did little good, 
however, either to the disciple or to the master. Lord 
Warwick grew up a rake, and Addison fell in love. 
The mature beauty of the countess has been celebrated 
by poets 3 in language which, after a very large allow- 
ance has been made for flattery, would lead us to be- 
lieve that she was a fine woman ; and her rank doubt- 
less heightened her attractions. The courtshrp was 
long. The hopes of the lover appear to have risen and 
fallen with the fortunes of his party. His attachment 
was at length matter of such notoriety that, when he 
visited Ireland for the last time, Rowe addressed some 

1 See Hare's Walks in London ; Macaulay's essay on Lord 
Holland ; and passages in the Life and Letters. 

2 The famous mistress of Charles II., who died in 1691 at 
about fifty. 

3 See, for example, the lines by Leonard Welsted, prefixed 
to Addison's Drummer. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 207 

consolatory verses to the Chloe of Holland House. 
It strikes us as a little strange that in these verses 
Addison should be called Lycidas, a name of singu- 
larly evil omen for a swain just about to cross St. 
George's Channel. 1 

At length Chloe capitulated. Addison was, indeed, 
able to treat with her on equal terms. He had reason 
to expect preferment even higher than that which 
he had attained. He had inherited the fortune of a 
brother 2 who died governor of Madras. He had pur- 
chased an estate in Warwickshire, and had been wel- 
comed to his domain in very tolerable verse by one 
of the neighboring squires, the poetical fox-hunter, 
William Somerville. 3 In August, 1716, the news- 
papers announced that Joseph Addison, Esq., famous 
for many excellent works both in verse and prose, 
had espoused the Countess Dowager of Warwick. 

He now fixed his abode at Holland House, a house 
which can boast of a greater number of inmates dis- 
tinguished in political and literary history than any 
other, private dwelling in England. His portrait still 
hangs there. The features are pleasing; the com- 
plexion is remarkably fair : but in the expression we 
trace rather the gentleness of his disposition than the 
force and keenness of his intellect. 

Not long after his marriage he reached the height 
of civil greatness. The Whig government had, dur- 
ing some time, been torn by internal dissensions. 

1 The reference is, of course, to Milton's Lycidas, which was 
written in memory of Edward King, who had heen drowned in 
a voyage to Ireland. 

2 Gulstone Addison. 

8 1G67-1742. He is chiefly remembered for his blank-verse 
poem The Chase, in which he described his favorite pursuit. 



208 MACAULAY. 

Lord Townshencl 1 led one section of the cabinet, 
Lord Sunderland the other. At length, in the spring 
of 1717, Sunderland triumphed. Townshend retired 
from office, and was accompanied by Walpole and 
Cowper. Sunderland proceeded to reconstruct the 
ministry, and Addison was appointed secretary of 
state. It is certain that the seals were pressed upon 
him, and were at first declined by him. Men equally 
versed in official business might easily have been 
found ; and his colleagues knew that they could not 
expect assistance from him in debate. He owed his 
elevation to his popularity, to his stainless probity, 
and to his literary fame. 

But scarcely had Addison entered the cabinet when 
his health began to fail. From one serious attack he 
recovered in the autumn; and his recovery was cele- 
brated in Latin verses, worthy of his own pen, by 
Vincent Bourne, who was then at Trinity College, 
Cambridge. A relapse soon took place, and in the 
following spring Addison was prevented by a severe 
asthma from discharging the duties of his post. He 
resigned it, and was succeeded by his friend Craggs, 2 
a young man whose natural parts, though little im- 
proved by cultivation, were quick and showy, whose 
graceful person and winning manners had made him 
generally acceptable in society, and who, if he had 
lived, would probably have been the most formidable 
of all the rivals of Walpole. 

As yet there was no Joseph Hume. 3 The minis- 

1 Charles, Viscount Townshend (1676-1738), Secretary of 
State at the accession of George I. He was Walpole's brother- 
in-law, and had a hreach with him later in his career. 

2 James Craggs (died in 1720, aged thirty-five). See his Epi- 
taph by Pope. 

3 1777-1855 ; a member of Parliament indefatigable in at- 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 209 

ters, therefore, were able to bestow on Addison a 
retiring pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year. 
In what form this pension was given, we are not told 
by the biographers, and have not time to inquire ; but 
it is certain that Addison did not vacate his seat in 
the House of Commons. 

Rest of mind and body seemed to have reestab- 
lished his health, and he thanked God, with cheerful 
piety, for having set him free both from his office 
and from his asthma. Many years seemed to be be- 
fore him ; and he meditated many works, — a tragedy 
on the death of Socrates, a translation of the Psalms, 
a treatise on the evidences of Christianity. Of this 
last performance, a part, which we could well spare, 
has come down to us. 

But the fatal complaint soon returned, and grad- 
ually prevailed against all the resources of medicine. 
It is melancholy to think that the last months of such 
a life should have been overclouded both by domes- 
tic and by political vexations. A tradition which 
began early, which has been generally received, and 
to which we have nothing to oppose, has represented 
his wife as an arrogant and imperious woman. It is 
said that, till his health failed him, he was glad to 
escape from the countess dowager and her magnificent 
dining-room, blazing with the gilded devices of the 
house of Rich, 1 to some tavern where he could enjoy a 
laugh, a talk about Virgil and Boileau, and a bottle of 
claret, with the friends of his happier days. All those 
friends, however, were not left to him. "Sir Richard 

tacking financial abuses and in pushing on reforms of every 
sort. 

1 That is, Holland House, so called because the Earl of Hol- 
land, who gave it its name, was Henry Rich, 



210 MACAU LAY. 

Steele had been gradually estranged by various causes. 
Pie considered himself as one who, in evil times, had 
braved martyrdom for his political principles, and 
demanded, when the Whig party was triumphant, a 
large compensation for what he had suffered when it 
was militant. The Whig leaders took a very differ- 
ent view of his claims. They thought that he had, 
by his own petulance and folly, brought them as well 
as himself into trouble, and, though they did not ab- 
solutely neglect him, doled out favors to him with a 
sparing hand. It was natural that he should be angry 
with them, and especially angry with Addison. But 
what, above all, seems to have disturbed Sir Richard 
was the elevation of Tiekell, who at thirty was made 
by Addison undersecretary of state; while the editor 
of the "Tatler" and " Spectator, " the author of "The 
Crisis," the member for Stockbridge, who had been 
persecuted for firm adherence to the house of Han- 
over, was, at near fifty, forced, after many solicita- 
tions and complaints, to content himself with a share 
in the patent of Drury Lane Theatre. Steele himself 
says, in his celebrated letter to Congreve, 1 that Addi- 
son, by his preference of Tiekell, "incurred the warm- 
est resentment of other gentlemen;" and everything 
seems to indicate that, of those resentful gentlemen, 
Steele was himself one. 

While poor Sir Richard was brooding over what 
he considered as Addison's unkindness, a new cause 
of quarrel arose. The Whig party, already divided 
against itself, was rent by a new schism. The cele- 
brated bill for limiting the number of peers had been 
brought in. The proud Duke of Somerset, first in 

1 Occasioned by the publication of Tickell's edition of Addi- 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 211 

rank of all the nobles whose religion permitted them 
to sit in Parliament, was the ostensible author of the 
measure ; but it was supported, and in truth devised, 
by the prime minister. 1 

We are satisfied that the bill was most pernicious, 
and we fear that the motives which induced Sunder- 
land to frame it were not honorable to him ; but we 
cannot deny that it was supported by many of the best 
and wisest men of that age. Nor was this strange. 
The royal prerogative had, within the memory of the 
generation then in the vigor of life, been so grossly 
abused that it was still regarded with a jealousy 
which, when the peculiar situation of the house of 
Brunswick 2 is considered, may perhaps be called 
immoderate. The particular prerogative of creating 
peers had, in the opinion of the Whigs, been grossly 
abused by Queen Anne's last ministry ; 3 and even 
the Tories admitted that her Majesty, in swamping, 
as it has since been called, the Upper House, had 
done what only an extreme case could justify. The 
theory of the English Constitution, according to many 
high authorities, was, that three independent powers 
— the sovereign, the nobilit}^, and the commons — 
ought constantly to act as checks on each other. If 
this theory were sound, it seemed to follow that to 
put one of these powers under the absolute control of 
the other two was absurd. But, if the number of 
peers were unlimited, it could not well be denied that 
the Upper House was under the absolute control of 

1 Macaulay refers to Lord Sunderland, who was in power 
with Lord Stanhope (1719). 

2 That is, of Hanover. George I. was Elector of Brunswick- 
Liineburg. 

3 Twelve Tory peers had been created in December, 1711, to 
counterbalance the Whig majority in the House of Lords. 



212 MACAULAY. 

the Crown and the Commons, and was indebted only 
to their moderation for any power which it might be 
suffered to retain. 

Steele took part with the Opposition, Addison with 
the Ministers. Steele, in a paper called ""The Ple- 
beian," 1 vehemently attacked the bill. Sunderland 
called for help on Addison, and Addison obeyed the 
call. In a paper called "The Old Whig," 2 he an- 
swered, and indeed refuted, Steele's arguments. It 
seems to us that the premises of both the controver- 
sialists were unsound; that on those premises Addison 
reasoned well and Steele ill; and that consequently 
Addison brought out a false conclusion, while Steele 
blundered upon the truth. In style, in wit, and in 
politeness Addison maintained his superiority, though 
"The Old Whig" is by no means one of his happiest 
performances. 

At first, both the anonymous opponents observed 
the laws of propriety. But at length Steele so far 
forgot himself as to throw an odious imputation on 
the morals of the chiefs of the administration. Addi- 
son replied with severity, but, in our opinion, with 
less severity than was due to so grave an offense 
against morality and decorum; nor did he, in his just 
anger, forget for a moment the laws of good taste and 
good breeding. One calumny which has been often 
repeated, and never yet contradicted, it is our duty 
to expose. It is asserted in the "Biographia Bri- 
tannica " that Addison designated Steele as "little 
Dicky." This assertion was repeated by Johnson, 
who had never seen "The Old Whig" and was there - 

1 Begun March 14, 1718-19, four numbers published. 

2 Begun Thursday, March 19, 1718-19, only two numbers 
published. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 213 

fore excusable. It has also been repeated by Miss 
Aikin, who has seen "The Old Whig," and for whom, 
therefore, there is less excuse. Now, it is true that 
the words "little Dicky" occur in "The Old Whig," 
and that Steele's name was Richard. It is equally 
tnie that the words "little Isaac" occur in "The Du- 
enna," 1 and that Newton's name was Isaac. But we 
confidently affirm that Addison's little Dicky had no 
more to do with Steele than Sheridan's little Isaac 
with Newton. If we apply the words "little Dicky" 
to Steele, we deprive a very lively and ingenious pas- 
sage, not only of all its wit, but of all its meaning. 
Little Dicky was the nickname of Henry Norris, 2 an 
actor of remarkably small stature but of great humor, 
who played the usurer Gomez, then a most popular 
part, in Dryden's "Spanish Friar." 

The merited reproof which Steele had received, 
though softened by some kind and courteous expres- 
sions, galled him bitterly. He replied with little 
force and great acrimony, but no rejoinder appeared. 
Addison was fast hastening to his grave, and had, 
we may well suppose, little disposition to prosecute a 
quarrel with an old friend. His complaint had ter- 
minated in dropsy. He bore up long and manfully; 
but at length he abandoned all hope, dismissed his 
physicians, and calmly prepared himself to die. 

His works he intrusted to the care of Tickell, 3 and 
dedicated them, a very few days before his death, to 
Craggs, in a letter written with the sweet and grace- 

1 A comic opera (1775) by Sheridan. 

2 Died 1733. He was a good comedian, and was known as 
" Jubilee Dicky," from his impersonation of a character in Far- 
quhar's Constant Couple. 

8 Who edited them in 1721. Jhe letter to Craggs was pre- 
fixed to this edition. 



214 MA CAUL AY. 

ful eloquence of a Saturday's "Spectator." In this 
his last composition he alluded to his approaching 
end in words so manly, so cheerful, and so tender 
that it is difficult to read them without tears. At the 
same time, he earnestly recommended the interests of 
Tickell to the care of Craggs. 

Within a few hours of the time at which this dedi- 
cation was written, Addison sent to beg Gay, 1 who 
was then living by his wits about town, to come to 
Holland House. Gay went, and was received with 
great kindness. To his amazement, his forgiveness 
was implored by the dying man. Poor Gay, the 
most good-natured and simple of mankind, could not 
imagine what he had to forgive. There was, how- 
ever, some wrong, the remembrance of which weighed 
on Addison's mind, and which he declared himself 
anxious to repair. He was in a state of extreme ex- 
haustion, and the parting was doubtless a friendly 
one on both sides. Gay supposed that some plan 
to serve him had been in agitation at court, and 
had been frustrated by Addison's influence. Nor is 
this improbable. Gay had paid assiduous court to 
the royal family. But in the Queen's days he had 
been the eulogist of Bolingbroke, and was still con- 
nected with many Tories. It is not strange that Ad- 
dison, while heated by conflict, should have thought 
himself justified in obstructing the preferment of one 
whom he might regard as a political enemy. Neither 
is it strange that, when reviewing his whole life and 
earnestly scrutinizing all his motives, he should think 
that he had acted an unkind and ungenerous part in 
using his power against a distressed man of letters 
who was as harmless and as helpless as a child. 
1 See the essay on Johnson, page 13, note 1. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 215 

One inference may be drawn from this anecdote. 
It appears that Addison, on his death-bed, called him- 
self to a strict account, and was not at ease till he 
had asked pardon for an injury which it was not even 
suspected that he had committed, — for an injury which 
would have caused disquiet only to a very tender con- 
science. Is it not, then, reasonable to infer that, if 
he had really been guilty of forming- a base conspiracy 
against the fame and fortunes of a rival, he would 
have expressed some remorse for so serious a crime? 
But it is unnecessary to multiply arguments and evi- 
dence for the defense when there is neither argument 
nor evidence for the accusation. 

The last moments of Addison were perfectly se- 
rene. His interview with his son-in-law is universally 
known. "See," he said, "how a Christian can die." 
The piety of Addison was, in truth, of a singularly 
cheerful character. The feeling which predominates 
in all his devotional writings is gratitude. God was 
to him the all-wise and all-powerful Friend who had 
watched over his cradle with more than maternal ten- 
derness; who had listened to his cries before they 
could form themselves in prayer; who had preserved 
his youth from the snares of vice; who had made his 
cup run over with worldly blessings ; who had doubled 
the value of those blessings b}* - bestowing a thankful 
heart to enjoy them, and dear friends to partake 
them; who had rebuked the waves of the Ligurian 
gulf, had purified the autumnal air of the Campagna, 
and had restrained the avalanches of Mont Cenis. 
Of the Psalms, his favorite was that which represents 
the Ruler of all thing's under the endearing' image of 
a shepherd whose crook guides the flock safe through 
gloomy and desolate glens to meadows well watered 



216 MACAULAY. 

and rich with herbage. 1 On that goodness to which 
he ascribed all the happiness of his life he relied in 
the hour of death with the love which caste th out 
fear. He died on the 17th of June, 1719. He had 
just entered on his forty-eighth year. 

His body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, 2 
and was borne thence to the Abbey at dead of night. 
The choir sang a funeral hymn. Bishop Atterbury, 3 
one of those Tories who had loved and honored the 
most accomplished of the Whigs, met the corpse, and 
led the procession by torchlight round the shrine of 
St. Edward 4 and the graves of the Plantagenets to 
the chapel of Henry VII. On the north side of that 
chapel, in the vault of the house of Albemarle, 5 the 
coffin of Addison lies next to the coffin of Montague. 
Yet a few months, and the same mourners passed 
again along the same aisle. The same sad anthem 
was again chanted. The same vault was again opened, 
and the coffin of Craggs was placed close to the coffin 
of Addison. 

Many tributes were paid to the memory of Addi- 
son, but one alone is now remembered. Tickell be- 
wailed his friend in an elegy which would do honor 

1 Psalm twenty-third, which Addison versified in The Spectator, 
No. 441. 

2 See Hare's Walks in London for this noted chamber in 
Westminster Abbey, which perhaps gets its name from its tap- 
estry, which described the history of Jerusalem. 

3 Francis Atterbury (1662-1732), Bishop of Rochester, noted 
for his wit and learning and for his zeal for the Jacobite cause, 
which led to his being exiled to France. See Macaulay's essay 
on him. 

4 The Confessor (1004-1066). 

5 George Monk (1608-1670), first Duke of Albemarle, promi- 
nent at the Restoration, was buried here. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 217 

to the greatest name in our literature, and which 
unites the energy and magnificence of Dryden to the 
tenderness and purity of Cowper. 1 This fine poem 
was prefixed to a superb edition of Addison's works 
which was published in 1721 by subscription. The 
names of the subscribers proved how widely his fame 
had been spread. That his countrymen should be 
eager to possess his writings, even in a costly form, 
is not wonderful; but it is wonderful that, though 
English literature was then little studied on the Con- 
tinent, Spanish grandees, Italian prelates, marshals 
of France should be found in the list. Among the 
most remarkable names are those of the Queen of 
Sweden, of Prince Eugene, of the Grand Duke of 
Tuscany, of the Dukes of Parma, Modena, and Gnas- 
talla, 2 of the Doge of Genoa, of the Regent Orleans, 3 
and of Cardinal Dubois. We ought to add that this 
edition, though eminently beautiful, is in some impor- 
tant points defective; nor, indeed, do we yet possess 
a complete collection of Addison's writings. 

It is strange that neither his opulent and noble 
widow, nor any of his powerful and attached friends, 
should have thought of placing even a simple tablet, 

1 William Cowper (1731-1800), the author of The Task, 
whose lines to the memory of his mother on the receipt of her 
picture were in Macaulay's mind when he wrote his rather ex- 
travagant praise of Tickell's elegy. Dryden's magnificence may 
be seen in certain stanzas of his Ode in memory of Mistress 
Anne Killigrew, but will be looked for in vain in Tickell's lines, 
excellent though they be. 

2 All in northern Italy. 

8 Philippe, Duke of Orleans (1674-1723), Regent of France 
during the minority of Louis XV. His court was noted for its 
debaucheries. Cardinal Guillaume Dubois (1656-17L ? 3) was a 
famous minister of the same period. See Perkins's France under 
the Regency. 



218 MACAU LAY. 

inscribed with his name, on the walls of the Abbey. 
It was not till three generations had laughed and wept 
over his pages that the omission was supplied by the 
public veneration. At length, in our own time, his 
image, skillfully graven, appeared in Poets' Corner. 
It represents him, as we can conceive him, — clad in 
his dressing-gown and freed from his wig, — step- 
ping from his parlor at Chelsea into his trim little 
garden, with the account of "The Everlasting Club," 
or "The Loves of Hilpa and Shalum," just finished 
for the next day's "Spectator," in his hand. Such 
a mark of national respect was due to the unsullied 
statesman, to the accomplished scholar, to the master 
of pure English eloquence, to the consummate painter 
of life and manners. It was due, above all, to the 
great satirist who alone knew how to use ridicule 
without abusing it, who, without inflicting a wound, 
effected a great social reform, and who reconciled wit 
and virtue, after a long and disastrous separation, 
during which wit had been led astray by profligacy, 
and virtue by fanaticism. 



FOR THE YEARS 
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1898 
1900 
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1899 


1897 
1898 
1900 

1898 


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